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NOTES OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT 




At the front in Manchuria 



Notes of a War 
Correspondent 



BY 

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 



ILLUSTRATED 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
NEW YORK:::::::::::::::::::::::::i9io 






Copyright, 1897, by 
HARPER & BROTHERS 

Copyright, 1898, 1900, 1910, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




©CLA271453 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Cuban-Spanish War — 

The Death of Rodriguez 3 

The Greek-Turkish War — 

The Battle of Velestinos 17 

The Spanish-American War — 

I. The Rough Riders at Guasimas . 45 

II. The Battle of San Juan Hill . . 77 

III. The Taking of Coamo loi 

IV. The Passing of San Juan Hill . 113 

The South African War — 

I. With Buller's Column 137 

11. The Relief of Ladysmith . . . 160 

III. The Night Before the Battle . 186 



Contents 

PAGE 

The Japanese-Russian War- 
Battles I Did Not See 213 

A War Correspondent's Kit 237 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

At the front in Manchuria Frontispiece l/ 

FACING PAGE 

The death of Rodriguez lo k 

A mountain battery at Velestinos 24 - 

Firing from the trenches at Velestinos 28 

Wounded Rough Riders coming over the hill at Sibo- 
ney. Head of column of Second Infantry going 
to support the Rough Riders, June 24th ... 68 

Grimes's battery at El Poso 86 

Officers watching the artillery play on Coamo . . . 102 

Rough Riders in the trenches ) 

The same spot as it appears to-day .... 



\ 



"Tommies" seeking shelter from "Long Tom" at 

Ladysmith 180 



President Steyn on his way to Sand River battle . . 198 

War correspondents in Manchuria . 220 

The component parts of the Preston cooking kit . 
paigns . . . 



German Army cooking kit after use in five cam- } 258 "" 



\ 



THE CUBAN-SPANISH WAR 



THE DEATH OF RODRIGUEZ* 

ADOLFO RODRIGUEZ was the only son of 
a Cuban farmer, who Hved nine miles out- 
side of Santa Clara, beyond the hills that surround 
that city to the north. 

When the revolution in Cuba broke out young 
Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father 
and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was 
taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the 
Guardia Civile, the corps d'elite of the Spanish 
army, and defended himself when they tried to 
capture him, wounding three of them with his 
machete. 

He was tried by a military court for bearing 
arms against the government, and sentenced to be 
shot by a fusillade some morning before sunrise. 

Previous to execution he was confined in the 
military prison of Santa Clara with thirty other 
insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, 
one after the other, on mornings following the 
execution of Rodriguez. 

*From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book," copyright, 1897, 
by Harper & Brothers. 

3 



The Death of Rodriguez 

His execution took place the morning of the 
19th of January, 1897, at a place a half-mile dis- 
tant from the city, on the great plain that stretches 
from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rod- 
riguez had lived for nineteen years. At the time 
of his death he was twenty years old. 

I witnessed his execution, and what follows 
is an account of the way he went to his death. 
The young man's friends could not be present, for 
it was impossible for them to show themselves in 
that crowd and that place with wisdom or with- 
out distress, and I like to think that, although 
Rodriguez could not know it, there was one per- 
son present when he died who felt keenly for him, 
and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spec- 
tator. 

There had been a full moon the night preceding 
the execution, and when the squad of soldiers 
marched from town it was still shining brightly 
through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles 
in extent, broken by ridges and gullies and covered 
with thick, high grass, and with bunches of cactus 
and palmetto. In the hollow of the ridges the 
mist lay like broad lakes of water, and on one side 
of the plain stood the walls of the old town. On 
the other rose hills covered with royal palms that 
showed white in the moonlight, like hundreds 

4 



The Death of Rodriguez 

of marble columns. A line of tiny camp-fires that 
the sentries had built during the night stretched 
between the forts at regular intervals and burned 
clearly. 

But as the light grew stronger and the moonlight 
faded these were stamped out, and when the sol- 
diers came in force the moon was a white ball in 
the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to 
ashes, and the sun had not yet risen. 

So even when the men were formed into three 
sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able 
to distinguish one another in the uncertain light 
of the morning. 

There were about three hundred soldiers in the 
formation. They belonged to the volunteers, and 
they deployed upon the plain with their band in 
front playing a jaunty quickstep, while their offi- 
cers galloped from one side to the other through 
the grass, seeking a suitable place for the exe- 
cution. Oustide the line the band still played 
merrily. 

A few men and boys, who had been dragged 
out of their beds by the music, moved about 
the ridges behind the soldiers, half-clothed, un- 
shaven, sleepy-eyed, yawning, stretching them- 
selves nervously and shivering in the cool, damp 
air of the morning. 

5 



The Death of Rodriguez 

Either owing to discipline or on account of the 
nature of their errand, or because the men were 
still but half awake, there was no talking in the 
ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning 
on their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, 
looking out across the plain to the hills. 

The men in the crowd behind them were also 
grimly silent. They knew that whatever they 
might say would be twisted into a word of sym- 
pathy for the condemned man or a protest against 
the government. So no one spoke; even the 
officers gave their orders in gruflF whispers, and 
the men in the crowd did not mix together, but 
looked suspiciously at one another and kept apart. 

As the light increased a mass of people came 
hurrying from the town with two black figures 
leading them, and the soldiers drew up at atten- 
tion, and part of the double line fell back and 
left an opening in the square. 

With us a condemned man walks only the short 
distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric 
chair, shielded from sight by the prison walls, and 
it often occurs even then that the short journey is 
too much for his strength and courage. 

But the Spaniards on this morning made the 
prisoner walk for over a half-mile across the broken 
surface of the fields. I expected to find the man, 

6 



The Death of Rodriguez 

no matter what his strength at other times might 
be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey; 
but as he came nearer I saw that he led all the 
others, that the priests on either side of him were 
taking two steps to his one, and that they were 
tripping on their gowns and stumbling over the 
hollows in their efforts to keep pace with him as 
he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in 
advance of them. 

He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant 
type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes, 
and a mass of curly black hair. He was shock- 
ingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more 
like a Neapolitan than a Cuban. You could 
imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or 
Genoa lolling in the sun and showing his white 
teeth when he laughed. Around his neck, hang- 
ing outside his linen blouse, he wore a new 
scapular. 

It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with 
at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill 
of satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed 
me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not 
arrogantly nor with bravado, but with the non- 
chalance of a man who meets his punishment fear- 
lessly, and who will let his enemies see that they 
can kill but cannot frighten him. 

7 



The Death of Rodriguez 

It was very quickly finished, with rough and, 
but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swift- 
ness. The crowd fell back when it came to the 
square, and the condemned man, the priests, and 
the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in 
and the line closed behind them. 

The officer who had held the cord that bound 
the Cuban's arms behind him and passed across 
his breast, let it fall on the grass and drew his 
sword, and Rodriguez dropped his cigarrette from 
his lips and bent and kissed the cross which the 
priest held up before him. 

The elder of the priests moved to one side and 
prayed rapidly in a loud whisper, while the other, 
a younger man, walked behind the firing squad 
and covered his face with his hands. They had 
both spent the last twelve hours with Rodriguez 
in the chapel of the prison. 

The Cuban walked to where the officer directed 
him to stand, and turning his back on the square, 
faced the hills and the road across them, which led 
to his father's farm. 

As the officer gave the first command he straight- 
ened himself as far as the cords would allow, and 
held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably 
on the morning light, which had just begun to 
show above the hills. 



The Death of Rodriguez 

He made a picture of such pathetic helpless- 
ness, but of such courage and dignity, that he re- 
minded me on the instant of that statue of Nathan 
Hale which stands in the City Hall Park, above 
the roar of Broadway. The Cuban's arms were 
bound, as are those of the statue, and he stood 
firmly, with his weight resting on his heels like a 
soldier on parade, and with his face held up fear- 
lessly, as is that of the statue. But there was this 
difference, that Rodriguez, while probably as will- 
ing to give six lives for his country as was the 
American rebel, being only a peasant, did not 
think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, 
live in bronze during the lives of many men, but 
will be remembered only as one of thirty Cubans, 
one of whom was shot at Santa Clara on each 
succeeding day at sunrise. 

The officer had given the order, the men had 
raised their pieces, and the condemned man had 
heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled 
back, and he had not moved. And then happened 
one of the most cruelly refined, though uninten- 
tional, acts of torture that one can very well im- 
agine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, 
preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted 
officers rode up to him and pointed out silently 
that, as I had already observed with some satis- 

9 



The Death of Rodriguez 

faction, the firing squad were so placed that when 
they fired they would shoot several of the soldiers 
stationed on the extreme end of the square. 

Their captain motioned his men to lower their 
pieces, and then walked across the grass and laid 
his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner. 

It is not pleasant to think what that shock 
must have been. The man had steeled himself 
to receive a volley of bullets. He believed that 
in the next instant he would be in another world; 
he had heard the command given, had heard the 
click of the Mausers as the locks caught — and 
then, at that supreme moment, a human hand 
had been laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke 
in his ear. 

You would expect that any man, snatched back 
to life in such a fashion would start and tremble 
at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, 
but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed 
with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, 
then nodded gravely, and, with his shoulders 
squared, took up the new position, straightened 
his back, and once more held himself erect. 

As an exhibition of self-control this should 
surely rank above feats of heroism performed in 
battle, where there are thousands of comrades to 
give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of 

lO 




The death of Rodriguez 



The Death of Rodriguez 

the hills he knew, with only enemies about him, 
with no source to draw on for strength but that 
which lay within himself. 

The officer of the firing squad, mortified by 
his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men 
once more levelled their rifles, the sword rose, 
dropped, and the men fired. At the report the 
Cuban's head snapped back almost between his 
shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some 
one had pushed him gently forward from behind 
and he had stumbled. 

He sank on his side in the wet grass without a 
struggle or sound, and did not move again. 

It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie 
there, that it could be ended so without a word, 
that the man in the linen suit would not rise to 
his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, 
as he apparently had started to do, to his home; 
that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that 
at least some one would be sorry or say some- 
thing or run to pick him up. 

But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the 
priests returned — ^the younger one with the tears 
running down his face — and donned their vest- 
ments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while 
the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hol- 
low square shook their accoutrements into place, 

II 



The Death of Rodriguez 

and shifted their pieces and got ready for the 
order to march, and the band began again with 
the same quickstep which the fusillade had inter- 
rupted. 

The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and 
no one seemed to remember that it had walked 
there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still 
burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place 
where the figure had first stood. 

The figure was a thing of the past, and the 
squad shook itself like a great snake, and then 
broke into little pieces and started off jauntily, 
stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep 
step to the music. 

The officers led it past the figure in the linen 
suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to 
part with the column to avoid treading on it. 
Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down 
on it, some craning their necks curiously, others 
giving a careless glance, and some without any 
interest at all, as they would have looked at a 
house by the roadside, or a hole in the road. 

One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing 
vine, just opposite to it, and fell. He grew very 
red when his comrades giggled at him for his 
awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators 
fell in on either side of the band. They, too, had 

12 



The Death of Rodriguez 

forgotten it, and the priests put their vestments 
back in the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks 
about them, and hurried off after the others. 

Every one seemed to have forgotten it except 
two men, who came slowly towards it from the 
town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an un- 
planed coffin, each with a cigarette between his 
lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to 
keep out the morning mists. 

At that moment the sun, which had shown 
some promise of its coming in the glow above the 
hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all 
the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of 
heat, and filled the air with warmth and light. 

The bayonets of the retreating column flashed 
in it, and at the sight a rooster in a farm-yard near 
by crowed vigorously, and a dozen bugles an- 
swered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes 
of the reveille, and from all parts of the city the 
church bells jangled out the call for early mass, 
and the little world of Santa Clara seemed to 
stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just 
begun. 

But as I fell in at the rear of the procession 
and looked back, the figure of the young Cuban, 
who was no longer a part of the world of Santa 
Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his mo- 

13 



The Death of Rodriguez 

tionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with 
the scapular twisted awry across his face, and the 
blood from his breast sinking into the soil he 
had tried to free. 



14 



THE GREEK-TURKISH WAR 



THE BATTLE OF VELESTINOS'*' 

THE Turks had made three attacks on Veles- 
tinos on three different days, and each time 
had been repulsed. A week later, on the 4th of 
May, they came back again, to the number of ten 
thousand, and brought four batteries with them, 
and the fighting continued for two more days. 
This was called the second battle of Velestinos. 
In the afternoon of the 5th the Crown Prince with- 
drew from Pharsala to take up a stronger position 
at Domokos, and the Greeks under General 
Smolenski, the military hero of the campaign, 
were forced to retreat, and the Turks came in, 
and, according to their quaint custom, burned the 
village and marched on to Volo. John Bass, the 
American correspondent, and myself were keeping 
house in the village, in the home of the mayor. 
He had fled from the town, as had nearly all the 
villagers; and as we liked the appearance of his 
house, I gave Bass a leg up over the wall around 
his garden, and Bass opened the gate, and we 

* From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book," copyright, 1897, 
by Harper & Brothers. 

17 



The Battle of Velestinos 

climbed in through his front window. It was like 
the invasion of the home of the Dusantes by Mrs. 
Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine, and, like them, we were 
constantly making discoveries of fresh treasure- 
trove. Sometimes it was in the form of a cake of 
soap or a tin of coffee, and once it was the mayor's 
fluted petticoats, which we tried on, and found 
very heavy. We could not discover what he did 
for pockets. All of these things, and the house 
itself, were burned to ashes, we were told, a few 
hours after we retreated, and we feel less troubled 
now at having made such free use of them. 

On the morning of the 4th we were awakened 
by the firing of cannon from a hill just over our 
heads, and we met in the middle of the room and 
solemnly shook hands. There was to be a battle, 
and we were the only correspondents on the spot. 
As I represented the London Times, Bass was the 
only representative of an American newspaper who 
saw this fight from its beginning to its end. 

We found all the hills to the left of the town 
topped with long lines of men crouching in little 
trenches. There were four rows of hills. If you 
had measured the distance from one hill-top to 
the next, they would have been from one hundred 
to three hundred yards distant from one another. 
In between the hills were guHies, or little valleys, 

18 



The Battle of Velestinos 

and the beds of streams that had dried up in the 
hot sun. These valleys were filled with high grass 
that waved about in the breeze and was occasion- 
ally torn up and tossed in the air by a shell. The 
position of the Greek forces was very simple. On 
the top of each hill was a trench two or three feet 
deep and some hundred yards long. The earth 
that had been scooped out to make the trench 
was packed on the edge facing the enemy, and on 
the top of that some of the men had piled stones, 
through which they poked their rifles. When a 
shell struck the ridge it would sometimes scatter 
these stones in among the men, and they did quite 
as much damage as the shells. Back of these 
trenches, and down that side of the hill which 
was farther from the enemy, were the reserves, who 
sprawled at length in the long grass, and smoked 
and talked and watched the shells dropping into 
the gully at their feet. 

The battle, which lasted two days, opened in 
a sudden and terrific storm of hail. But the storm 
passed as quickly as it came, leaving the trenches 
running with water, like the gutters of a city street 
after a spring shower; and the men soon sopped 
them up with their overcoats and blankets, and in 
half an hour the sun had dried the wet uniforms, 
and the field-birds had begun to chirp again, and 

19 



The Battle of Velestinos 

the grass was warm and fragrant. The sun was 
terribly hot. There was no other day during that 
entire brief campaign when its glare was so in- 
tense or the heat so suffocating. The men curled 
up in the trenches, with their heads pressed against 
the damp earth, panting and breathing heavily, 
and the heat-waves danced and quivered about 
them, making the plain below flicker like a pic- 
ture in a cinematograph. 

From time to time an officer would rise and peer 
down into the great plain, shading his eyes with 
his hands, and shout something at them, and they 
would turn quickly in the trench and rise on one 
knee. And at the shout that followed they would 
fire four or five rounds rapidly and evenly, and 
then, at a sound from the officer's whistle, would 
drop back again and pick up the cigarettes they 
had placed in the grass and begin leisurely to swab 
out their rifles with a piece of dirty rag on a clean- 
ing rod. Down in the plain below there was ap- 
parently nothing at which they could shoot except 
the great shadows of the clouds drifting across 
the vast checker-board of green and yellow fields, 
and disappearing finally between the mountain 
passes beyond. In some places there were square 
dark patches that might have been bushes, and 
nearer to us than these were long lines of fresh 

20 



The Battle of Velestinos 

earth, from which steam seemed to be escaping 
in little wisps. What impressed us most of what 
we could see of the battle then was the remark- 
able number of cartridges the Greek soldiers 
wasted in firing into space, and the fact that they 
had begun to fire at such long range that, in order 
to get the elevation, they had placed the rifle butt 
under the armpit instead of against the shoulder. 
Their sights were at the top notch. The car- 
tridges reminded one of corn-cobs jumping out 
of a corn-sheller, and it was interesting when the 
bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop 
up into the air at the same time, flashing in the 
sun as though they were glad to have done their 
work and to get out again. They rolled by the 
dozens underfoot, and twinkled in the grass, and 
when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, 
or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musi- 
cally. It was like wading in a gutter filled with 
thimbles. 

Then there began a concert which came from 
just overhead — a concert of jarring sounds . and 
little whispers. The "shrieking shrapnel," of 
which one reads in the description of every battle, 
did not seem so much like a shriek as it did like 
the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some 
one strikes the pole from which they hang, and 

21 



The Battle of Velestinos 

when they came very close the noise was like the 
rushing sound that rises between two railroad 
trains when they pass each other in opposite 
directions and at great speed. After a few hours 
we learned by observation that when a shell sang 
overhead it had already struck somewhere else, 
which was comforting, and which was explained, 
of course, by the fact that the speed of the shell is 
so much greater than the rate at which sound 
travels. The bullets were much more disturbing; 
they seemed to be less open in their warfare, and 
to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only 
to whisper as they passed. They moved under a 
cloak of invisibility, and made one feel as though 
he were the blind man in a game of blind-man's- 
buff, where every one tapped him in passing, 
leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither 
they had gone and from what point they would 
come next. The bullets sounded like rustling 
silk, or like humming-birds on a warm summer's 
day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stage 
of a theatre. Any one who has stood behind the 
scenes when a storm is progressing on the stage, 
knows the little wheel wound with silk that 
brushes against another piece of silk, and which 
produces the whistling effect of the wind. At 
Velestinos, when the firing was very heavy, it was 

22 



The Battle of Velestinos 

exactly as though some one were turning one of 
these silk wheels, and so rapidly as to make the 
whistling continuous. 

When this concert opened, the officers shouted 
out new orders, and each of the men shoved his 
sight nearer to the barrel, and when he fired 
again, rubbed the butt of his gun snugly against 
his shoulder. The huge green blotches on the 
plain had turned blue, and now we could dis- 
tinguish that they moved, and that they were mov- 
ing steadily forward. Then they would cease 
to move, and a little later would be hidden behind 
great puffs of white smoke, which were followed by 
a flash of flame; and still later there would come 
a dull report. At the same instant something 
would hurl itself jarring through the air above 
our heads, and by turning on one elbow we could 
see a sudden upheaval in the sunny landscape 
behind us, a spurt of earth and stones like a min- 
iature geyser, which was filled with broken branches 
and tufts of grass and pieces of rock. As the 
Turkish aim grew better these volcanoes appeared 
higher up the hill, creeping nearer and nearer to 
the rampart of fresh earth on the second trench 
until the shells hammered it at last again and 
again, sweeping it away and cutting great gashes 
in it, through which we saw the figures of men 

23 



The Battle of Velestinos 

caught up and hurled to one side, and others fling- 
ing themselves face downward as though they 
were diving into water; and at the sarne instant 
in our own trench the men would gasp as though 
they had been struck too, and then becoming con- 
scious of having done this would turn and smile 
sheepishly at each other, and crawl closer into 
the burrows they had made in the earth. 

From where we sat on the edge of the trench, 
with our feet among the cartridges, we could, by 
leaning forward, look over the piled-up earth 
into the plain below, and soon, without any aid 
from field-glasses, we saw the blocks of blue 
break up into groups of men. These men came 
across the ploughed fields in long, widely opened 
lines, walking easily and leisurely, as though they 
were playing golf or sowing seed in the furrows. 
The Greek rifles crackled and flashed at the 
lines, but the men below came on quite steadily, 
picking their way over the furrows and appear- 
ing utterly unconscious of the seven thousand 
rifles that were calling on them to halt. They 
were advancing directly toward a little sugar-loaf 
hill, on the top of which was a mountain battery 
perched like a tiara on a woman's head. It was 
throwing one shell after another in the very path 
of the men below, but the Turks still continued 

24 



The Battle of Velestinos 

to pick their way across the field, without showing 
any regard for the mountain battery. It was 
worse than threatening; it seemed almost as 
though they meant to insult us. If they had come 
up on a run they would not have appeared so 
contemptuous, for it would have looked then as 
though they were trying to escape the Greek fire, or 
that they were at least interested in what was go- 
ing forward. But the steady advance of so many 
men, each plodding along by himself, with his 
head bowed and his gun on his shoulder, was 
aggravating. 

There was a little village at the foot of the hill. 
It was so small that no one had considered it. 
It was more like a collection of stables gathered 
round a residence than a town, and there was a 
wall completely encircling it, with a gate in the 
wall that faced us. Suddenly the doors of this 
gate were burst open from the inside, and a man 
in a fez ran through them, followed by many 
more. The first man was waving a sword, and a 
peasant in petticoats ran at his side and pointed up 
with his hand at our trench. Until that moment 
the battle had lacked all human interest; we 
might have been watching a fight against the stars 
or the man in the moon, and, in spite of the noise 
and clatter of the Greek rifles, and the ghostlike 

25 



The Battle of Velestinos 

whispers and the rushing sounds in the air, there 
was nothing to remind us of any other battle of 
which we had heard or read. But we had seen 
pictures of officers waving swords, and we knew 
that the fez was the sign of the Turk — of the 
enemy — of the men who were invading Thessaly, 
who were at that moment planning to come up a 
steep hill on which we happened to be sitting and 
attack the people on top of it. And the spectacle 
at once became comprehensible, and took on the 
human interest it had lacked. The men seemed 
to feel this, for they sprang up and began cheering 
and shouting, and fired in an upright position, 
and by so doing exposed themselves at full length 
to the fire from the men below. The Turks in 
front of the village ran back into it again, and 
those in the fields beyond turned and began to 
move away, but in that same plodding, aggravat- 
ing fashion. They moved so leisurely that there 
was a pause in the noise along the line, while the 
men watched them to make sure that they were 
really retreating. And then there was a long 
cheer, after which they all sat down, breathing 
deeply, and wiping the sweat and dust across their 
faces, and took long pulls at their canteens. 

The different trenches were not all engaged at 
the same time. They acted according to the 

26 



The Battle of Velestinos 

individual judgment of their commanding officer, 
but always for the general good. Sometimes the 
fire of the enemy would be directed on one par- 
ticular trench, and it would be impossible for the 
men in that trench to rise and reply without hav- 
ing their heads carried away; so they would lie 
hidden, and the men in the trenches flanking them 
would act in their behalf, and rake the enemy 
from the front and from every side, until the fire 
on that trench was silenced, or turned upon some 
other point. The trenches stretched for over half 
a mile in a semicircle, and the little hills over 
which they ran lay at so many different angles, 
and rose to such different heights, that sometimes 
the men in one trench fired directly over the heads 
of their own men. From many trenches in the 
first line it was impossible to see any of the Greek 
soldiers except those immediately beside you. If 
you looked back or beyond on either hand there 
was nothing to be seen but high hills topped with 
fresh earth, and the waving yellow grass, and the 
glaring blue sky. 

General Smolenski directed the Greeks from 
the plain to the far right of the town; and his 
presence there, although none of the men saw 
him nor heard of him directly throughout the 
entire day, was more potent for good than would 

27 



The Battle of Velestinos 

have been the presence of five thousand other 
men held in reserve. He was a mile or two miles 
away from the trenches, but the fact that he was 
there, and that it was Smolenski who was giving 
the orders, was enough. Few had ever seen 
Smolenski, but his name was sufficient; it was 
as effective as is Mr. Bowen's name on a Bank of 
England note. It gave one a pleasant feeling to 
know that he was somewhere within call; you 
felt there would be no "routs" nor stampedes 
while he was there. And so for two days those 
seven thousand men lay in the trenches, repulsing 
attack after attack of the Turkish troops, suffo- 
cated with the heat and chilled with sudden 
showers, and swept unceasingly by shells and 
bullets — partly because they happened to be good 
men and brave men, but largely because they 
knew that somewhere behind them a stout, bull- 
necked soldier was sitting on a camp-stool, watch- 
ing them through a pair of field-glasses. 

Toward mid-day you would see a man leave 
the trench with a comrade's arm around him, 
and start on the long walk to the town where the 
hospital corps were waiting for him. These men 
did not wear their wounds with either pride or 
braggadocio, but regarded the wet sleeves and 
shapeless arms in a sort of wondering surprise. 

28 



The Battle of Velestinos 

There was much more of surprise than of pain 
in their faces, and they seemed to be puzzling as to 
what they had done in the past to deserve such a 
punishment. 

Other men were carried out of the trench and 
laid on their backs on the high grass, staring up 
drunkenly at the glaring sun, and with their limbs 
fallen into unfamiliar poses. They lay so still, 
and they were so utterly oblivious of the roar and 
rattle and the anxious energy around them that 
one grew rather afraid of them and of their su- 
periority to their surroundings. The sun beat on 
them, and the insects in the grass waving above 
them buzzed and hummed, or burrowed in the 
warm moist earth upon which they lay; over their 
heads the invisible carriers of death jarred the air 
with shrill crescendoes, and near them a comrade 
sat hacking with his bayonet at a lump of hard 
bread. He sprawled contentedly in the hot sun, 
with humped shoulders and legs far apart, and 
with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now 
and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese 
balanced on the end of his knife blade, and look 
at the twisted figures by him on the grass, or he 
would dodge involuntarily as a shell swung low 
above his head, and smile nervously at the still 
forms on either side of him that had not moved. 

29 



The Battle of Velestinos 

Then he brushed the crumbs from his jacket and 
took a drink out of his hot canteen, and looking 
again at the sleeping figures pressing down the long 
grass beside him, crawled back on his hands and 
knees to the trench and picked up his waiting rifle. 
The dead gave dignity to what the other men 
were doing, and made it noble, and, from another 
point of view, quite senseless. For their dying 
had proved nothing. Men who could have been 
much better spared than they, were still alive in 
the trenches, and for no reason but through mere 
dumb chance. There was no selection of the un- 
fittest; it seemed to be ruled by unreasoning luck. 
A certain number of shells and bullets passed 
through a certain area of space, and men of differ- 
ent bulks blocked that space in different places. 
If a man happened to be standing in the line of a 
bullet he was killed and passed into eternity, 
leaving a wife and children, perhaps, to mourn 
him. ** Father died," these children will say, 
"doing his duty." As a matter of fact, father died 
because he happened to stand up at the wrong 
moment, or because he turned to ask the man on 
his right for a match, instead of leaning toward 
the left, and he projected his bulk of two hundred 
pounds where a bullet, fired by a man who did 
not know him and who had not aimed at him, hap- 

30 



The Battle of Velestinos 

pened to want the right of way. One of the twO 
had to give it, and as the bullet would not, the 
soldier had his heart torn out. The man who sat 
next to me happened to stoop to fill his cartridge- 
box just as the bullet that wanted the space he 
had occupied passed over his bent shoulder; and 
so he was not killed, but will live for sixty years, 
perhaps, and will do much good or much evil. 
Another man in the same trench sat up to clean 
his rifle, and had his arm in the air driving the 
cleaning rod down the barrel, when a bullet passed 
through his lungs, and the gun fell across his face, 
with the rod sticking in it, and he pitched forward 
on his shoulder quite dead. If he had not cleaned 
his gun at that moment he would probably be 
alive in Athens now, sitting in front of a cafe and 
fighting the war over again. Viewed from that 
point, and leaving out the fact that God ordered 
it all, the fortunes of the game of war seemed as 
capricious as matching pennies, and as imper- 
sonal as the wheel at Monte Carlo. In it the 
brave man did not win because he was brave, 
but because he was lucky. A fool and a philoso- 
pher are equal at a game of dice. And these men 
who threw dice with death were interesting to 
watch, because, though they gambled for so great 
a stake, they did so unconcernedly and without 

31 



The Battle of Velestinos 

flinching, and without apparently appreciating the 
seriousness of the game. 

There was a red-headed, freckled peasant boy, 
in dirty petticoats, who guided Bass and myself 
to the trenches. He was one of the few peasants 
who had not run away, and as he had driven sheep 
over every foot of the hills, he was able to guide the 
soldiers through those places where they were best 
protected from the bullets of the enemy. He did 
this all day, and was always, whether coming or 
going, under a heavy fire; but he enjoyed that 
fact, and he seemed to regard the battle only as 
a delightful change in the quiet routine of his 
life, as one of our own country boys at home 
would regard the coming of the spring circus or 
the burning of a neighbor's barn. He ran dancing 
ahead of us, pointing to where a ledge of rock 
offered a natural shelter, or showing us a steep 
gully where the bullets could not fall. When they 
came very near him he would jump high in the 
air, not because he was startled, but out of pure 
animal joy in the excitement of it, and he would 
frown importantly and shake his red curls at us, 
as though to say: "I told you to be careful. 
Now, you see. Don't let that happen again." 
We met him many times during the two days, es- 
corting different companies of soldiers from one 

32 



The Battle of Velestinos 

point to another, as though they were visitors to 
his estate. When a shell broke, he would pick 
up a piece and present it to the officer in charge, 
as though it were a flower he had plucked from 
his own garden, and which he wanted his guest 
to carry away with him as a souvenir of his visit. 
Some one asked the boy if his father and mother 
knew where he was, and he replied, with amuse- 
ment, that they had run away and deserted him, 
and that he had remained because he wished to 
see what a Turkish army looked like. He was a 
much more plucky boy than the overrated Casa- 
bianca, who may have stood on the burning deck 
whence all but him had fled because he could not 
swim, and because it was with him a choice of 
being either burned or drowned. This boy stuck 
to the burning deck when it was possible for him 
at any time to have walked away and left it burn- 
ing. But he stayed on because he was amused, 
and because he was able to help the soldiers from 
the city in safety across his native heath. He was 
much the best part of the show, and one of the 
bravest Greeks on the field. He will grow up to 
be something fine, no doubt, and his spirit will 
rebel against having to spend his life watching his 
father's sheep. He may even win the race from 
Marathon. 

33 



The Battle of Velestinos 

Another Greek who was a most interesting 
figure to us was a Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis. 
He was in command of the mountain battery on 
the flat, round top of the high hill. On account 
of its height the place seemed much nearer to 
the sun than any other part of the world, and the 
heat there was three times as fierce as in the 
trenches below. When you had climbed to the 
top of this hill it was like standing on a roof- 
garden, or as though you were watching a naval 
battle from a fighting top of one of the battle- 
ships. The top of the hill was not unlike an im- 
mense circus ring in appearance. The piled-up 
earth around its circular edge gave that impres- 
sion, and the glaring yellow wheat that was 
tramped into glaring yellow soil, and the blue 
ammunition-boxes scattered about, helped out the 
illusion. It was an exceedingly busy place, and 
the smoke drifted across it continually, hiding us 
from one another in a curtain of flying yellow 
dust, while over our heads the Turkish shells raced 
after each other so rapidly that they beat out the 
air like the branches of a tree in a storm. On 
account of its height, and the glaring heat, and 
the shells passing, and the Greek guns going off 
and then turning somersaults, it was not a place 
suited for meditation; but Ambroise Frantzis 

34 



The Battle of Velestinos 

meditated there as though he were in his own 
study. He was a very young man and very shy, 
and he was too busy to consider his own safety, 
or to take time, as the others did, to show that he 
was not considering it. Some of the other officers 
stood up on the breastworks and called the atten- 
tion of the men to what they were doing; but as 
they did not wish the men to follow their example 
in this, it was difficult to see what they expected to 
gain by their braggadocio. Frantzis was as uncon- 
cerned as an artist painting a big picture in his 
studio. The battle plain below him was his can- 
vas, and his nine mountain guns were his paint 
brushes. And he painted out Turks and Turkish 
cannon with the same concentrated, serious 
expression of countenance that you see on the 
face of an artist when he bites one brush between 
his lips and with another wipes out a false line 
or a touch of the wrong color. You have seen an 
artist cock his head on one side, and shut one eye 
and frown at his canvas, and then select several 
brushes and mix different colors and hit the can- 
vas a bold stroke, and then lean back to note the 
effect. Frantzis acted in just that way. He 
would stand with his legs apart and his head on 
one side, pulling meditatively at his pointed beard, 
and then taking a closer look through his field- 

35 



The Battle of Velestinos 

glasses, would select the three guns he had decided 
would give him the effect he wanted to produce, 
and he would produce that effect. When the 
shot struck plump in the Turkish lines, and we 
could see the earth leap up into the air like 
geysers of muddy water, and each gunner would 
wave his cap and cheer, Frantzis would only smile 
uncertainly, and begin again, with the aid of his 
field-glasses, to puzzle out fresh combinations. 

The battle that had begun in a storm of hail 
ended on the first day in a storm of bullets that 
had been held in reserve by the Turks, and which 
were let off just after sundown. They came from 
a natural trench, formed by the dried-up bed of a 
stream which lay just below the hill on which 
the first Greek trench was situated. There were 
bushes growing on the bank of the stream nearest 
to the Greek lines, and these hid the men who 
occupied it. Throughout the day there had been 
an irritating fire from this trench from what ap- 
peared to be not more than a dozen rifles, but we 
could see that it was fed from time to time with 
many boxes of ammunition, which were carried 
to it on the backs of mules from the Turkish posi- 
tion a half mile farther to the rear. Bass and a 
corporal took a great aversion to this little group 
of Turks, not because there were too many of them 

36 



The Battle of Velestinos 

to be disregarded, but because they were so near; 
and Bass kept the corporal's services engaged in 
firing into it, and in discouraging the ammunition 
mules when they were being driven in that di- 
rection. Our corporal was a sharp-shooter, and, 
accordingly, felt his superiority to his comrades; 
and he had that cheerful contempt for his officers 
that all true Greek soldiers enjoy, and so he never 
joined in the volley-firing, but kept his ammuni- 
tion exclusively for the dozen men behind the 
bushes and for the mules. He waged, as it were, 
a little battle on his own account. The other 
men rose as commanded and fired regular volleys, 
and sank back again, but he fixed his sights to suit 
his own idea of the range, and he rose when he 
was ready to do so, and fired whenever he thought 
best. When his officer, who kept curled up in the 
hollow of the trench, commanded him to lie down, 
he would frown and shake his head at the interrup- 
tion, and paid no further attention to the order. 
He was as much alone as a hunter on a mountain 
peak stalking deer, and whenever he fired at the 
men in the bushes he would swear softly, and 
when he fired at the mules he would chuckle and 
laugh with delight and content. The mules had 
to cross a ploughed field in order to reach the 
bushes, and so we were able to mark where his 

37 



The Battle of Velestinos 

bullets struck, and we could see them skip across 
the field, kicking up the dirt as they advanced, 
until they stopped the mule altogether, or fright- 
ened the man who was leading it into a disorderly 
retreat. 

It appeared later that instead of there being 
but twelve men in these bushes there were six 
hundred, and that they were hiding there until 
the sun set in order to make a final attack on the 
first trench. They had probably argued that at 
sunset the strain of the day's work would have 
told on the Greek morale, that the men's nerves 
would be jerking and their stomachs aching for 
food, and that they would be ready for darkness 
and sleep, and in no condition to repulse a fresh 
and vigorous attack. So, just as the sun sank, and 
the officers were counting the cost in dead and 
wounded, and the men were gathering up blank- 
ets and overcoats, and the firing from the Greek 
lines had almost ceased, there came a fierce rattle 
from the trench to the right of us, like a watch- 
dog barking the alarm, and the others took it up 
from all over the hill, and when we looked down 
into the plain below to learn what it meant, we 
saw it blue with men, who seemed to have sprung 
from the earth. They were clambering from the 
bed of the stream, breaking through the bushes, 

38 



The Battle of Velestinos 

and forming into a long line, which, as soon as 
formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals 
by flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one 
gun-barrel to the next, as you have seen a current 
of electricity run along a line of gas-jets. In the 
dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding 
than they had been in the glare of the sun, and 
the crash of the artillery coming on top of the 
silence was the more fierce and terrible by the 
contrast. The Turks were so close on us that 
the first trench could do little to help itself, and 
the men huddled against it while their comrades 
on the surrounding hills fought for them, their 
volleys passing close above our heads, and meet- 
ing the rush of the Turkish bullets on the way, 
so that there was now one continuous whistling 
shriek, like the roar of the wind through the rigging 
of a ship in a storm. If a man had raised his arm 
above his head his hand would have been torn off^. 
It had come up so suddenly that it was like two 
dogs, each springing at the throat of the other, and 
in a greater degree it had something of the sound 
of tw^o vsald animals struggling for life. Volley an- 
swered volley as though with personal hate — one 
crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating 
it out of recognition with the bursting roar of 
heavy cannon. At the same instant all of the 

39 



The Battle of Velestinos 

Turkish batteries opened with great, ponderous, 
booming explosions, and the Httle mountain guns 
barked and snarled and shrieked back at them, 
and the rifle volleys crackled and shot out blister- 
ing flames, while the air was filled with invisible 
express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed 
into one another, bursting and shrieking and 
groaning. It seemed as though you were lying in a 
burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had 
withstood the storms of centuries crashing and 
falling around your ears, and sending up great 
showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five 
minutes or less, and then the death-grip seemed 
to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a man 
panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound 
with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aim- 
lessly by, and from hill-top to hill-top the officers' 
whistles sounded as though a sportsman were call- 
ing off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the 
coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting 
and sweating, and stared open-eyed at one another, 
like men who had looked for a moment into hell, 
and had come back to the world again. 

The next day was like the first, except that by 
five o'clock in the afternoon the Turks appeared 
on our left flank, crawling across the hills like an 
invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that 

40 



The Battle of Velestinos 

at Velestinos had made the two best and most 
dignified stands of the war withdrew upon Halmy- 
ros, and the Turks poured into the village and 
burned it, leaving nothing standing save two tall 
Turkish minarets that many years before, when 
Thessaly belonged to the Sultan, the Turks them- 
selves had placed there. 



41 



THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 



I 

THE ROUGH RIDERS AT GUASIMAS 

ON the day the American troops landed on the 
coast of Cuba, the Cubans informed General 
Wheeler that the enemy were intrenched at Guasi- 
mas, blocking the way to Santiago. Guasimas is 
not a village, nor even a collection of houses; 
it is the meeting place of two trails which join at 
the apex of a V, three miles from the seaport town 
of Siboney, and continue merged in a single trail 
to Santiago. General Wheeler, guided by the 
Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the 23rd of 
June, and with the position of the enemy fully 
explained to him, returned to Siboney and in- 
formed General Young and Colonel Wood that 
on the following morning he would attack the 
Spanish position at Guasimas. It has been 
stated that at Guasimas, the Rough Riders were 
trapped in an ambush, but, as the plan was dis- 
cussed while I was present, I know that so far 
from any one's running into an ambush, every one 
of the officers concerned had a full knowledge 
of where he would find the enemy, and what he 
was to do when he found him. 

45 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

That night no one slept, for until two o'clock in 
the morning, troops were still being disembarked 
in the surf, and two ships of war had their search- 
lights turned on the landing-place, and made Sib- 
oney as light as a ball-room. Back of the search- 
lights was an ocean white with moonlight, and on 
the shore red camp-fires, at which the half-drowned 
troops were drying their uniforms, and the Rough 
Riders, who had just marched in from Daiquiri, 
were cooking a late supper, or early breakfast of 
coffee and bacon. Below the former home of 
the Spanish comandante, which General Wheeler 
had made his head-quarters, lay the camp of the 
Rough Riders, and through it Cuban officers 
were riding their half-starved ponies, and scatter- 
ing the ashes of the camp-fires. Below them 
was the beach and the roaring surf, in which 
a thousand or so naked men were assisting and 
impeding the progress shoreward of their com- 
rades, in pontoons and shore boats, which were 
being hurled at the beach like sleds down a water 
chute. 

It was one of the most weird and remarkable 
scenes of the war, probably of any war. An 
army was being landed on an enemy's coast at 
the dead of night, but with the same cheers and 
shrieks and laughter that rise from the bathers at 

46 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

Coney Island on a hot Sunday. It was a pande- 
monium of noises. The men still to be landed 
from the "prison hulks," as they called the trans- 
ports, were singing in chorus, the men already on 
shore were dancing naked around the camp-fires 
on the beach, or shouting with delight as they 
plunged into the first bath that had offered in 
seven days, and those in the launches as they were 
pitched head-first at the soil of Cuba, signalized 
their arrival by howls of triumph. On either 
side rose black overhanging ridges, in the low- 
land between were white tents and burning fires, 
and from the ocean came the blazing, dazzling 
eyes of the search-lights shaming the quiet moon- 
light. 

After three hours' troubled sleep in this tumult 
the Rough Riders left camp at five in the morn- 
ing. With the exception of half a dozen officers 
they were dismounted, and carried their blanket 
rolls, haversacks, ammunition, and carbines. 
General Young had already started toward Guasi- 
mas the First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and 
according to the agreement of the night before 
had taken the eastern trail to our right, while 
the Rough Riders climbed the steep ridge above 
Siboney and started toward the rendezvous along 
the trail to the west, which was on high ground 

47 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

and a half mile to a mile distant from the trail 
along which General Young and his regulars 
were marching. There was a valley between us, 
and the bushes were so thick on both sides of 
our trail that it was not possible at any time, until 
we met at Guasimas, to distinguish the other 
column. 

As soon as the Rough Riders had reached the 
top of the ridge, not twenty minutes after they 
had left camp, which was the first opportunity 
that presented itself, Colonel Wood ordered Cap- 
tain Capron to proceed with his troop in front of 
the column as an advance guard, and to choose 
a *' point" of five men skilled as scouts and trailers. 
Still in advance of these he placed two Cuban 
scouts. The column then continued along the 
trail in single file. The Cubans were at a distance 
of two hundred and fifty yards; the "point" 
of five picked men under Sergeant Byrne and 
duty-Sergeant Fish followed them at a distance of 
a hundred yards, and then came Capron's troop 
of sixty men strung out in single file. No flankers 
were placed for the reason that the dense under- 
growth and the tangle of vines that stretched from 
the branches of the trees to the bushes below 
made it a physical impossibility for man or beast 
to move forward except along the single trail. 

48 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

Colonel Wood rode at the head of the column, 
followed by two regular army officers who were 
members of General Wheeler's staff, a Cuban 
officer, and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. They 
rode slowly in consideration of the troopers on 
foot, who under a cruelly hot sun carried heavy 
burdens. To those who did not have to walk, 
it was not unlike a hunting excursion in our West; 
the scenery was beautiful and the view down the 
valley one of luxuriant peace. Roosevelt had 
never been in the tropics and Captain McCormick 
and I were talking back at him over our shoulders 
and at each other, pointing out unfamiliar trees 
and birds. Roosevelt thought it looked like a 
good deer country, as it once was; it reminded 
McCormick of Southern California; it looked to 
me like the trails in Central America. We ad- 
vanced, talking in that fashion and in high spirits, 
and congratulating ourselves in being shut of the 
transport and on breathing fine mountain air 
again, and on the fact that we were on horseback. 
We agreed it was impossible to appreciate that we 
were really at war — that we were in the enemy's 
country. We had been riding in this pleasant 
fashion for an hour and a half with brief halts for 
rest, when Wood stopped the head of the column, 
and rode down the trail to meet Capron, who was 

49 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

coming back. Wood returned immediately, leading 
his horse, and said to Roosevelt: 

"Pass the word back to keep silence in the 
ranks." 

The place at which we had halted was where 
the trail narrowed, and proceeded sharply down- 
ward. There was on one side of it a stout barbed- 
wire fence of five strands. By some fortunate 
accident this fence had been cut just where the 
head of the column halted. On the left of the trail 
it shut ofF fields of high grass blocked at every 
fifty yards with great barricades of undergrowth 
and tangled trees and chapparal. On the other 
side of the trail there was not a foot of free ground; 
the bushes seemed absolutely impenetrable, as 
indeed they were later found to be. 

When we halted, the men sat down beside the 
trail and chewed the long blades of grass, or 
fanned the air with their hats. They had no 
knowledge of the situation such as their leaders 
possessed, and their only emotion was one of sat- 
isfaction at the chance the halt gave them to rest 
and to shift their packs. Wood again walked 
down the trail with Capron and disappeared, and 
one of the officers informed us that the scouts 
had seen the outposts of the enemy. It did not 
seem reasonable that the Spaniards, who had 

50 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

failed to attack us when we landed at Baiquiri, 
would oppose us until they could do so in force, 
so, personally, I doubted that there were any 
Spaniards nearer than Santiago. But we tied our 
horses to the wire fence, and Capron's troop 
knelt with carbines at the "Ready," peering into 
the bushes. We must have waited there, while 
Wood reconnoitred, for over ten minutes. Then 
he returned, and began deploying his troops out 
at either side of the trail. Capron he sent on 
down the trail itself. G Troop was ordered to 
beat into the bushes on the right, and K and 
A were sent over the ridge on which we stood 
down into the hollow to connect with General 
Young's column on the opposite side of the val- 
ley. F and E Troops were deployed in skirmish- 
line on the other side of the wire fence. Wood 
had discovered the enemy a few hundred yards 
from where he expected to find him, and so far 
from being ** surprised," he had time, as I have 
just described, to get five of his troops into posi- 
tion before a shot was fired. The firing, when 
it came, started suddenly on our right. It sounded 
so close that — still believing we were acting on a 
false alarm, and that there were no Spaniards 
ahead of us — I guessed it was Capron's men firing 
at random to disclose the enemy's position. I 

51 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

ran after G Troop under Captain Llewellyn, 
and found them breaking their way through the 
bushes in the direction from which the volleys 
came. It was like forcing the walls of a maze. 
If each trooper had not kept in touch with the 
man on either hand he would have been lost in 
the thicket. At one moment the underbrush 
seemed swarming with our men, and the next, 
except that you heard the twigs breaking, and 
heavy breathing or a crash as a vine pulled some 
one down, there was not a sign of a human being 
anywhere. In a few minutes we broke through 
into a little open place in front of a dark curtain 
of vines, and the men fell on one knee and began 
returning the fire that came from it. 

The enemy's fire was exceedingly heavy, and 
his aim was excellent. We saw nothing of the 
Spaniards, except a few on the ridge across the 
valley. I happened to be the only one present 
with field glasses, and when I discovered this force 
on the ridge, and had made sure, by the cockades 
in their sombreros, that they were Spaniards and 
not Cubans, I showed them to Roosevelt. He 
calculated they were five hundred yards from us, 
and ordered the men to fire on them at that range. 
Through the two hours of fighting that followed, 
although men were falling all around us, the 

52 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

Spaniards on the ridge were the only ones that 
many of us saw. But the fire against us was not 
more than eighty yards away, and so hot that our 
men could only lie flat in the grass and return it 
in that position. It was at this moment that our 
men believed they were being attacked by Ca- 
pron's troop, which they imagined must have 
swung to the right, and having lost its bearings and 
hearing them advancing through the underbrush, 
had mistaken them for the enemy. They accord- 
ingly ceased firing and began shouting in order to 
warn Capron that he was shooting at his friends. 
This is the foundation for the statement that the 
Rough Riders had fired on each other, which 
they did not do then or at any other time. Later 
we examined the relative position of the trail 
which Capron held, and the position of G Troop, 
and they were at right angles to one another. 
Capron could not possibly have fired into us at 
any time, unless he had turned directly around 
in his tracks and aimed up the very trail he had 
just descended. Advancing, he could no more 
have hit us than he could have seen us out of the 
back of his head. When we found many hun- 
dred spent cartridges of the Spaniards a hundred 
yards in front of G Troop's position, the question 
as to who had fired on us was answered. 

53 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

It was an exceedingly hot corner. The whole 
troop was gathered in the little open place blocked 
by the net-work of grape-vines and tangled bushes 
before it. They could not see twenty feet on 
three sides of them, but on the right hand lay the 
valley, and across it came the sound of Young's 
brigade, who were apparently heavily engaged. 
The enemy's fire was so close that the men could 
not hear the word of command, and Captain 
Llewellyn and Lieutenant Greenway, unable to 
get their attention, ran among them, batting them 
with their sombreros to make them cease firing. 
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt ran up just then, 
bringing with him Lieutenant Woodbury Kane 
and ten troopers from K Troop. Roosevelt lay 
down in the grass beside Llewellyn and consulted 
with him eagerly. Kane was smiling with the 
charming content of a perfectly happy man. 
When Captain Llewellyn told him his men were 
not needed, and to rejoin his troop, he led his 
detail over the edge of the hill on which we lay. 
As he disappeared below the crest he did not 
stoop to avoid the bullets, but walked erect, 
still smiling. Roosevelt pointed out that it was 
impossible to advance farther on account of the 
net-work of wild grape-vines that masked the 
Spaniards from us, and that we must cross the 

54 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

trail and make to the left. The shouts the men had 
raised to warn Capron had established our posi- 
tion to the enemy, and the firing was now fearfully 
accurate. Sergeant Russell, who in his day had 
been a colonel on a governor's staff, was killed, 
and the other sergeant was shot through the wrist. 
In the space of three minutes nine men were lying 
on their backs helpless. Before we got away, 
every third man was killed, or wounded. We 
drew off slowly to the left, dragging the wounded 
with us. Owing to the low aim of the enemy, we 
were forced to move on our knees and crawl. 
Even then men were hit. One man near me was 
shot through the head. Returning later to locate 
the body and identify him, I found that the 
buzzards had torn off his lips and his eyes. This 
mutilation by these hideous birds was, without 
doubt, what Admiral Sampson mistook for the 
work of the Spaniards, when the bodies of the 
marines at Guantanamo were found disfigured. 
K Troop meantime had deployed into the valley 
under the fire from the enemy on the ridge. It 
had been ordered to establish communication with 
General Young's column, and while advancing 
and firing on the ridge. Captain Jenkins sent the 
guidon bearer back to climb the hill and wave his 
red and white banner where Young's men could 

55 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

see it. The guidon bearer had once run for Con- 
gress on the gold ticket in Arizona, and, as some 
one said, was naturally the man who should have 
been selected for a forlorn hope. His flag brought 
him instantly under a heavy fire, but he continued 
waving it until the Tenth Cavalry on the other 
side of the valley answered, and the two columns 
were connected by a skirmish-line composed of K 
Troop and A, under Captain "Bucky" O'Neill. 
G Troop meanwhile had hurried over to the 
left, and passing through the opening in the wire 
fence had spread out into open order. It followed 
down after Captain Luna's troop and D and E 
Troops, which were well already in advanse. 
Roosevelt ran forward and took command of the 
extreme left of this line. Wood was walking up 
and down along it, leading his horse, which he 
thought might be of use in case he had to move 
quickly to alter his original formation. His plan, 
at present, was to spread out his men so that they 
would join Young on the right, and on the left 
swing around until they flanked the enemy. K 
and A Troops had already succeeded in joining 
hands with Young's column across the valley, 
and as they were capable of taking care of them- 
selves, Wood was bending his efforts to keep his 
remaining four companies in a straight line and re- 

56 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

volving them around the enemy's "end." It was 
in no way an easy thing to do. The men were at 
times wholly hidden from each other, and from 
him; probably at no one time did he see more 
than two of his troops together. It was only by 
the firing that he could tell where his men lay, and 
that they were always advancing. 

The advances were made in quick, desperate 
rushes — sometimes the ground gained was no 
more than a man covers in sliding for a base. 
At other times half a troop would rise and race 
forward and then burrow deep in the hot grass 
and fire. On this side of the line there was an 
occasional glimpse of the enemy. But for a great 
part of the time the men shot at the places from 
where the enemy's fire seemed to come, aiming 
low and answering in steady volleys. The fire 
discipline was excellent. The prophets of evil of 
the Tampa Bay Hotel had foretold that the cow- 
boys would shoot as they chose, and, in the field, 
would act independently of their officers. As it 
turned out, the cowboys were the very men who 
waited most patiently for the officers to give the 
word of command. At all times the movement 
was without rest, breathless and fierce, like a 
cane-rush, or a street fight. After the first three 
minutes every man had stripped as though for 

57 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

a wrestling match, throwing oflF all his impedi- 
menta but his cartridge-belt and canteen. Even 
then the sun handicapped their strength cruelly. 
The enemy was hidden in the shade of the jungle, 
while they, for every thicket they gained, had to 
fight in the open, crawling through grass which 
was as hot as a steam bath, and with their flesh 
and clothing torn by thorns and the sword-like 
blade of the Spanish "bayonet." The glare of 
the sun was full in their eyes and as fierce as a 
lime-light. 

When G Troop passed on across the trail to the 
left I stopped at the place where the column had 
first halted — it had been converted into a dressing 
station and the wounded of G Troop were left 
there in the care of the hospital stewards. A tall, 
gaunt young man with a cross on his arm was 
just coming back up the trail. His head was 
bent, and by some surgeon's trick he was carrying 
a wounded man much heavier than himself across 
his shoulders. As I stepped out of the trail he 
raised his head, and smiled and nodded, and left 
me wondering where I had seen him before, smil- 
ing in the same cheery, confident way and mov- 
ing in that same position. I knew it could not 
have been under the same conditions, and yet he 
was certainly associated with another time of 

58 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

excitement and rush and heat. Then I remem- 
bered him. As now he had been covered with 
blood and dirt and perspiration, but then he wore 
a canvas jacket and the man he carried on his 
shoulders was trying to hold him back from a 
white-washed line. And I recognized the young 
doctor, with the blood bathing his breeches, as 
"Bob" Church, of Princeton. That was only 
one of four badly wounded men he carried that 
day on his shoulders over a half-mile of trail that 
stretched from the firing-line back to the dressing 
station and under an unceasing fire.* As the 
senior surgeon was absent he had chief responsi- 
bility that day for all the wounded, and that so 
few of them died is greatly due to this young 
man who went down into the firing-line and pulled 
them from it, and bore them out of danger. The 
comic paragraphers who wrote of the members 
of the Knickerbocker Club and the college swells 
of the Rough Riders and of their imaginary valets 
and golf clubs, should, in decency, since the fight 
at Guasimas apologize. For the same spirit that 
once sent these men down a white-washed field 
against their opponents' rush line was the spirit 
that sent Church, Channing, Devereux, Ronalds, 

* For this "distinguished gallantry in action," James R. Church 
later received the medal of honor. 

59 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

Wrenn, Cash, Bull, Larned, Goodrich, Greenway, 
Dudley Dean, and a dozen others through the 
high hot grass at Guasimas, not shouting, as their 
friends the cowboys did, but each with his mouth 
tightly shut, with his eyes on the ball, and moving 
in obedience to the captain's signals. 

Judging from the sound, our firing-line now 
seemed to be half a mile in advance of the place 
where the head of the column had first halted. 
This showed that the Spaniards had been driven 
back at least three hundred yards from their orig- 
inal position. It was impossible to see any of 
our men in the field, so I ran down the trail with 
the idea that it would lead me back to the troop 
I had left when I had stopped at the dressing 
station. The walk down that trail presented one 
of the most grewsome pictures of the war. It nar- 
rowed as it descended; it was for that reason the 
enemy had selected that part of it for the attack, 
and the vines and bushes interlaced so closely 
above it that the sun could not come through. 

The rocks on either side were spattered with 
blood and the rank grass was matted with it. 
Blanket rolls, haversacks, carbines, and canteens 
had been abandoned all along its length. It 
looked as though a retreating army had fled along 
it, rather than that one troop had fought its way 

60 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

through it to the front. Except for the clatter of 
the land-crabs, those hideous orchid-colored mon- 
sters that haunt the places of the dead, and the 
whistling of the bullets in the trees, the place was 
as silent as a grave. For the wounded lying along 
its length were as still as the dead beside them. 
The noise of the loose stones rolling under my 
feet brought a hospital steward out of the brush, 
and he called after me: 

"Lieutenant Thomas is badly wounded in here, 
and we can't move him. We want to carry him 
out of the sun some place, where there is shade 
and a breeze." Thomas was the first lieutenant 
of Capron's troop. He is a young man, large and 
powerfully built. He was shot through the leg 
just below the trunk, and I found him lying on a 
blanket half naked and covered with blood, and 
with his leg bound in tourniquets made of twigs 
and pocket-handkerchiefs. It gave one a thrill 
of awe and wonder to see how these cowboy 
surgeons, with a stick that one would use to light 
a pipe and with the gaudy 'kerchiefs they had 
taken from their necks, were holding death at 
bay. The young officer was in great pain and 
tossing and raving wildly. When we gathered 
up the corners of his blanket and lifted him, he 
tried to sit upright, and cried out, "You're tak- 

6i 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

ing me to the front, aren't you ? You said you 
would. They've killed my captain — do you un- 
derstand ? They've killed Captain Capron. The 
Mexicans! They've killed my captain." 

The troopers assured him they v^ere carrying 
him to the firing-line, but he was not satisfied. 
We stumbled over the stones and vines, bumping 
his wounded body against the ground and leaving 
a black streak in the grass behind us, but it seemed 
to hurt us more than it did him, for he sat up again 
clutching at us imploringly with his bloody hands. 

"For God's sake, take me to the front," he 
begged. *'Do you hear.? I order you; damn 
you, I order — We must give them hell; do you 
hear ? we must give them hell. They've killed 
Capron. They've killed my captain." 

The loss of blood at last mercifully silenced him, 
and when we had reached the trail he had fainted 
and I left them kneeling around him, their grave 
boyish faces filled with symapthy and concern. 

Only fifty feet from him and farther down the 
trail I passed his captain, with his body propped 
against Church's knee and with his head fallen 
on the surgeon's shoulder. Capron was always a 
handsome, soldierly looking man — some said that 
he was the most soldierly looking of any of the 
young officers in the army — and as I saw him then 

62 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

death had given him a great dignity and noble- 
ness. He was only twenty-eight years old, the age 
when life has just begun, but he rested his head on 
the surgeon's shoulder like a man who knew he 
was already through with it and that, though 
they might peck and mend at the body, he had re- 
ceived his final orders. His breast and shoulders 
were bare, and as the surgeon cut the tunic from 
him the sight of his great chest and the skin, as 
white as a girl's, and the black open wound against 
it made the yellow stripes and the brass insignia 
on the tunic, strangely mean and tawdry. 

Fifty yards farther on, around a turn in the 
trail, behind a rock, a boy was lying with a bullet 
wound between his eyes. His chest was heav- 
ing with short, hoarse noises which I guessed 
were due to some muscular action entirely, and 
that he was virtually dead. I lifted him and 
gave him some water, but it would not pass 
through his fixed teeth. In the pocket of his 
blouse was a New Testament with the name 
Fielder Dawson^ Mo., scribbled in it in pencil. 
While I was writing it down for identification, a 
boy as young as himself came from behind me 
down the trail. 

"It is no use," he said; "the surgeon has seen 
him; he says he is just the same as dead. He is 

63 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

my bunkie; we only met two weeks ago at San 
Antonio; but he and me had got to be such good 
friends — But there's nothing I can do now." 
He threw himself down on the rock beside his 
bunkie, who was still breathing with that hoarse 
inhuman rattle, and I left them, the one who had 
been spared looking down helplessly with the 
tears creeping across his cheeks. 

The firing was quite close now, and the trail 
was no longer filled with blanket rolls and haver- 
sacks, nor did pitiful, prostrate figures lie in wait 
behind each rock. I guessed this must mean that 
I now was well in advance of the farthest point to 
which Capron's troop had moved, and I was 
running forward feeling confident that I must be 
close on our men, when I saw the body of a ser- 
geant blocking the trail and stretched at full 
length across it. Its position was a hundred 
yards in advance of that of any of the others — ^it 
was apparently the body of the first man killed. 
After death the bodies of some men seem to shrink 
almost instantly within themselves; they become 
limp and shapeless, and their uniforms hang upon 
them strangely. But this man, who was a giant 
in life, remained a giant in death — his very atti- 
tude was one of attack; his fists were clinched, his 
jaw set, and his eyes, which were still human, 

64 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

seemed fixed with resolve. He was dead, but he 
was not defeated. And so Hamilton Fish died 
as he had lived — defiantly, running into the very 
face of the enemy, standing squarely upright on 
his legs instead of crouching, as the others called 
to him to do, until he fell like a column across the 
trail. "God gives," was the motto on the watch 
I took from his blouse, and God could not have 
given him a nobler end; to die, in the fore-front 
of the first fight of the war, quickly, painlessly, 
with a bullet through the heart, with his regi- 
ment behind him, and facing the enemies of his 
country. 

The line at this time was divided by the trail 
into two wings. The right wing, composed of K 
and A Troops, was advancing through the val- 
ley, returning the fire from the ridge as it did so, 
and the left wing, which was much the longer 
of the two, was swinging around on the enemy's 
right flank, with its own right resting on the 
barbed-wire fence. I borrowed a carbine from a 
wounded man, and joined the remnant of L 
Troop which was close to the trail. 

This troop was then commanded by Second 
Lieutenant Day, who on account of his conduct 
that morning and at the battle of San Juan later, 
when he was shot through the arm, was promoted 

65 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

to be captain of L Troop, or, as it was later officially 
designated, Capron's troop. He was walking up 
and down the line as unconcernedly as though 
we were at target practice, and an Irish ser- 
geant, Byrne, was assisting him by keeping up a 
continuous flow of comments and criticisms that 
showed the keenest enjoyment of the situation. 
Byrne was the only man I noticed who seemed to 
regard the fight as in any way humorous. For 
at Guasimas, no one had time to be flippant, or 
to exhibit any signs of braggadocio. It was for 
all of them, from the moment it started, through 
the hot, exhausting hour and a half that it lasted, 
a most serious proposition. The conditions were 
exceptional. The men had made a night march 
the evening before, had been given but three 
hours' troubled sleep on the wet sand, and had 
then been marched in full equipment uphill and 
under a cruelly hot sun, directly into action. And 
eighty per cent, of them had never before been 
under fire. Nor had one man in the regiment 
ever fired a Krag-Jorgensen carbine until he fired 
it at a Spaniard, for their arms had been issued 
to them so soon before sailing that they had only 
drilled with them without using cartridges. To 
this handicap was also added the nature of the 
ground and the fact that our men could not see 

66 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

their opponents. Their own men fell or rolled 
over on every side, shot down by an invisible 
enemy, with no one upon whom they could retali- 
ate, with no sign that the attack might not go on 
indefinitely. Yet they never once took a step back- 
ward, but advanced grimly, cleaning a bush or 
thicket of its occupants before charging it, and 
securing its cover for themselves, and answering 
each volley with one that sounded like an echo 
of the first. The men were panting for breath; 
the sweat ran so readily into their eyes that they 
could not see the sights of their guns; their Hmbs 
unused to such exertion after seven days of 
cramped idleness on the troop-ship, trembled with 
weakness and the sun blinded and dazzled them; 
but time after time they rose and staggered for- 
ward through the high grass, or beat their way 
with their carbines against the tangle of vines 
and creepers. A mile and a half of territory 
was gained foot by foot in this fashion, the three 
Spanish positions carried in that distance being 
marked by the thousands of Mauser cartridges 
that lay shining and glittering in the grass and 
behind the barricades of bushes. But this distance 
had not been gained without many losses, for 
every one in the regiment was engaged. Even 
those who, on account of the heat, had dropped 

67 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

out along the trail, as soon as the sound of the 
fight reached them, came Hmping to the front — 
and plunged into the firing-line. It was the only 
place they could go — there was no other line. 
With the exception of Churches dressing station 
and its wounded there were no reserves. 

Among the first to be wounded was the corre- 
spondent, Edward Marshall, of the New York 
Journal, who was on the firing-line to the left. 
He was shot through the body near the spine, 
and when I saw him he was suffering the most 
terrible agonies, and passing through a succession 
of convulsions. He nevertheless, in his brief 
moments of comparative peace, bore himself with 
the utmost calm, and was so much a soldier to 
duty that he continued writing his account of the 
fight until the fight itself was ended. His cour- 
age was the admiration of all the troopers, and 
he was highly commended by Colonel Wood in 
the official account of the engagement. 

Nothing so well illustrated how desperately 
each man was needed, and how little was his de- 
sire to withdraw, as the fact that the wounded 
lay where they fell until the hospital stewards 
found them. Their comrades did not use them as 
an excuse to go to leave the firing-line. I have 
watched other fights, where the men engaged were 

68 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

quite willing to unselfishly bear the wounded from 
the zone of danger. 

The fight had now lasted an hour, and the line 
had reached a more open country, with a slight 
incline upward toward a wood, on the edge of 
which was a ruined house. This house was a 
former distillery for aguardiente, and was now 
occupied in force by the enemy. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Roosevelt on the far left was moving up 
his men with the intention of taking this house 
on the flank; Wood, who was all over the hne, 
had the same objective point in his mind. The 
troop commanders had a general idea that the 
distillery was the key to the enemy's position, 
and were all working in that direction. It was ex- 
tremely difficult for Wood and Roosevelt to com- 
municate with the captains, and after the first gen- 
eral orders had been given them they relied upon 
the latter's intelligence to pull them through. I 
do not suppose Wood, out of the five hundred en- 
gaged, saw more than thirty of his men at any one 
time. When he had passed one troop, except 
for the noise of its volley firing, it was immediately 
lost to him in the brush, and it was so v^th the 
next. Still, so excellent was the intelligence of the 
officers, and so ready the spirit of the men, that 
they kept an almost perfect alignment, as was 

69 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

shown when the final order came to charge in the 
open fields. The advance upon the ruined build- 
ing was made in stubborn, short rushes, some- 
times in silence, and sometimes firing as we ran. 
The order to fire at will was seldom given, the 
men waiting patiently for the officers' signal, and 
then answering in volleys. Some of the men who 
were twice Day's age begged him to let them take 
the enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he 
answered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and 
held them down until there was a lull in the 
enemy's fire, when he would lead them forward, 
always taking the advance himself. By the way 
they made these rushes, it was easy to tell which 
men were used to hunting big game in the West 
and which were not. The Eastern men broke at 
the word, and ran for the cover they were di- 
rected to take like men trying to get out of the 
rain, and fell panting on their faces, while the 
Western trappers and hunters slipped and wrig- 
gled through the grass like Indians; dodging 
from tree trunk to tree trunk, and from one bush 
to another. They fell into line at the same time 
with the others, but while doing so they had not 
once exposed themselves. Some of the escapes 
were little short of miraculous. The man on my 
right, Champneys Marshall, of Washington, had 

70 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

one bullet pass through his sleeve, and another pass 
through his shirt, where it was pulled close to 
his spine. The holes where the ball entered and 
went out again were clearly cut. Another man's 
skin was slightly burned by three bullets in three 
distinct lines, as though it had been touched for 
an instant by the lighted end of a cigar. Green- 
way was shot through this shirt across the breast, 
and Roosevelt was so close to one bullet, when 
it struck a tree, that it filled his eyes and ears 
with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant 
Thomas were both wounded within a few feet of 
Colonel Wood, and his color-sergeant, Wright, 
who followed close at his heels, was clipped three 
times in the head and neck, and four bullets 
passed through the folds of the flag he carried. 
One trooper, Rowland, of Deming, was shot 
through the lower ribs; he was ordered by Roose- 
velt to fall back to the dressing station, but there 
Church told him there was nothing he could do 
for him then, and directed him to sit down until 
he could be taken to the hospital at Siboney. 
Rowland sat still for a short time, and then 
remarked restlessly, "I don't seem to be do- 
ing much good here," and picking up his car- 
bine, returned to the firing-line. There Roosevelt 
found him. 

71 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

"I thought I ordered you to the rear," he de- 
manded. 

"Yes, sir, you did,'* Rowland said, "but there 
didn't seem to be much doing back there." 

After the fight he was sent to Siboney with the 
rest of the wounded, but two days later he ap- 
peared in camp. He had marched from Siboney, 
a distance of six miles, and uphill all the way, 
carrying his carbine, canteen, and cartridge-belt. 

"I thought you were in hospital," Wood said. 

"I was," Rowland answered sheepishly, "but 
I didn't seem to be doing any good there." 

They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued 
his duties and went into the fight of the San Juan 
hills with the hole still through his ribs. Another 
cowboy named Heffner,when shot through the body, 
asked to be propped up against a tree with his can- 
teen and cartridge-belt beside him, and the last his 
troop saw of him he was seated alone grimly firing 
over their heads in the direction of the enemy. 

Early in the fight I came upon Church attend- 
ing to a young cowboy, who was shot through 
the chest. The entrance to his wound was so 
small that Church could not insert enough of 
the gauze packing to stop the flow of blood. 

"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger," 
he said to the boy, "or you'll bleed to death." 

72 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you 
know your business." The boy stretched out on 
his back and lay perfectly quiet while Church, 
with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges 
of the wound. His patient neither whimpered 
nor swore, but stared up at the sun in silence. 
The bullets were falling on every side, and the 
operation was a hasty one, but the trooper made 
no comment until Church said, "We'd better get 
out of this; can you stand being carried .?" 

"Do you think you can carry me ?" the troop- 
er asked. 

"Yes." 

"Well," exclaimed the boy admiringly, "you 
certainly know your business!" 

Another of the Rough Riders was brought to 
the dressing station with a shattered ankle, and 
Church, after bandaging it, gave him his choice 
of riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being 
carried, a day later, on a litter. 

" If you think you can manage to ride the mule 
with that broken foot," he said, "you can start at 
once, but if you wait until to-morrow, when I can 
spare the men, you can be carried all the way." 

The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six 
hospital stewards lifted him and dropped him 
on the mule, and into a huge Mexican saddle. 

73 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup, and 
his untouched one into the other, and gathered 
up the reins. 

"Does it pain you? Can you stand it?" 
Church asked anxiously. The cowboy turned 
and smiled down upon him with amused disdain. 

''Stand this?'' he cried. "Why, this is just 
like getting money from home." 

Toward the last, the firing from the enemy 
sounded less near, and the bullets passed much 
higher. Roosevelt, who had picked up a carbine 
and was firing to give the direction to the others, 
determined upon a charge. Wood, at the other 
end of the line, decided at the same time upon 
the same manoeuvre. It was called "Wood's 
bluff" afterward, for he had nothing to back it 
with; while to the enemy it looked as though his 
whole force was but the skirmish-line in advance 
of a regiment. The Spaniards naturally could 
not believe that this thin line which suddenly 
broke out of the bushes and from behind trees 
and came cheering out into the hot sunlight was 
the entire fighting force against it. They supposed 
the regiment was coming close on its heels, and as 
Spanish troops hate being rushed as a cat hates 
water, they fired a few parting volleys and broke 
and ran. The cheering had the same invigorat- . 

74 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

ing effect on our own side as a cold shower; it 
was what first told half the men where the other 
half were, and it made every individual man feel 
better. As we knew it was only a bluff, the first 
cheer was wavering, but the sound of our own 
voices was so comforting that the second cheer 
was a howl of triumph. 

As it was, the Spaniards thought the Rough 
Riders had already disregarded all the rules of war. 

**When we fired a volley,'' one of the prisoners 
said later, "instead of falling back they came 
forward. That is not the way to fight, to come 
closer at every volley." And so, when instead of 
retreating on each volley, the Rough Riders 
rushed at them, cheering and filling the hot air 
with wild cowboy yells, the dismayed enemy re- 
treated upon Santiago, where he announced he 
had been attacked by the entire American army. 
One of the residents of Santiago asked one of the 
soldiers if those Americans fought well. 

*' Well!'* he replied, "they tried to catch us with 
their hands!" 

I have not attempted to give any account of 
General Young's fight on our right, which was 
equally desperate, and, owing to the courage of 
the colored troops of the Tenth in storming a 
ridge, equally worthy of praise. But it has 

75 



The Rough Riders at Guasimas 

seemed better not to try and tell of anything I 
did not see, but to limit myself to the work of 
the Rough Riders, to whom, after all, the victory 
was due, as it was owing to Colonel Wood's charge, 
which took the Spaniards in flank, that General 
Wheeler and General Young were able to advance, 
their own stubborn attack in front having failed 
to dislodge the enemy from his rifle-pits. 

According to the statement of the enemy, who 
had every reason not to exaggerate the size of 
his own force, 4,000 Spaniards were engaged in 
this action. The Rough Riders numbered 534, 
and General Young's force numbered 464. The 
American troops accordingly attacked a force over 
four times their own number intrenched behind 
rifle-pits and bushes in a mountain pass. In spite 
of the smokeless powder used by the Spaniards, 
which hid their position, the Rough Riders 
routed them out of it, and drove them back from 
three different barricades until they made their 
last stand in the ruined distillery, whence they 
finally drove them by assault. The eager spirit 
in which this was accomplished is best described 
in the Spanish soldier's answer to the inquiring 
civilian, "They tried to catch us with their hands." 
The Rough Riders should adopt it as their motto. 



76 



II 

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN HILL 

AFTER the Guasimas fight on June 24, the 
^ army was advanced along the single trail 
which leads from Siboney on the coast to Santiago. 
Two streams of excellent water run parallel with 
this trail for short distances, and some eight miles 
from the coast crossed it in two places. Our 
outposts were stationed at the first of these fords, 
the Cuban outposts a mile and a half farther on 
at the ford nearer Santiago, where the stream 
made a sharp turn at a place called El Poso. 
Another mile and a half of trail extended from 
El Poso to the trenches of San Juan. The reader 
should remember El Poso, as it marked an im- 
portant starting-point against San Juan on the 
eventful first of July. 

For six days the army was encamped on either 
side of the trail for three miles back from the 
outposts. The regimental camps touched each 
other, and all day long the pack-trains carrying 
the day's rations passed up and down between 
them. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where 
it was possible, in a few places, for two wagons 

77 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

to pass at one time, but the greater distances were 
so narrow that there was but just room for a 
wagon, or a loaded mule-train, to make its way. 
The banks of the trail were three or four feet high, 
and when it rained it was converted into a huge 
gutter, with sides of mud, and with a liquid mud 
a foot deep between them. The camps were 
pitched along the trail as near the parallel stream 
as possible, and in the occasional places where 
there was rich, high grass. At night the men 
slept in dog tents, open at the front and back, 
and during the day spent their time under the 
shade of trees along the trail, or on the banks of 
the stream. Sentries were placed at every few 
feet along these streams to guard them from any 
possible pollution. For six days the army rested 
in this way, for as an army moves and acts only 
on its belly, and as the belly of this army was 
three miles long, it could advance but slowly. 

This week of rest, after the cramped life of the 
troop-ship, was not ungrateful, although the ra- 
tions were scarce and there was no tobacco, which 
was as necessary to the health of the men as their 
food. 

During this week of waiting, the chief excite- 
ment was to walk out a mile and a half beyond 
the outposts to the hill of El Poso, and look 

78 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

across the basin that lay in the great valley which 
leads to Santiago. The left of the valley was the 
hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley 
was the hills in which nestle the village of El 
Caney. Below El Poso, in the basin, the dense 
green forest stretched a mile and a half to the hills 
of San Juan. These hills looked so quiet and 
sunny and well kept that they reminded one of a 
New England orchard. There was a blue bunga- 
low on a hill to the right, a red bungalow higher 
up on the right, and in the centre the block-house 
of San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda. 
Three-quarters of a mile behind them, with a dip 
between, were the long white walls of the hospital 
and barracks of Santiago, wearing thirteen Red 
Cross flags, and, as was pointed out to the foreign 
attaches later, two six-inch guns a hundred yards 
in advance of the Red Cross flags. 

It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous look- 
ing that it breathed of peace. It seemed as 
though one might, without accident, walk in and 
take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on 
the benches in the Plaza, or rock in one of the 
great bent-wood chairs around the patio of the 
Don Carlos Club. 

But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit 
opened in the hill-side of San Juan, and in it we 

79 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

could see straw sombreros rising and bobbing up 
and down, and under the shade of the block- 
house, blue-coated Spaniards strolling leisurely 
about or riding forth on little white ponies to 
scamper over the hills. Officers of every regi- 
ment, attaches of foreign countries, correspondents, 
and staff officers daily reported the fact that the 
rifle-pits were growing in length and in number, 
and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso 
the enemy was intrenching himself at San Juan, 
and at the Httle village of El Caney to the right, 
where he was marching through the streets. But 
no artillery was sent to El Poso hill to drop a 
shell among the busy men at work among the 
trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El 
Caney. For four days before the American sol- 
diers captured the same rifle-pits at El Caney and 
San Juan, with a loss of two thousand men, they 
watched these men diligently preparing for their 
coming, and wondered why there was no order 
to embarrass or to end these preparations. 

On the afternoon of June 30, Captain Mills rode 
up to the tent of Colonel Wood, and told him that 
on account of illness, General Wheeler and Gen- 
eral Young had relinquished their commands, and 
that General Sumner would take charge of the 
Cavalry Division; that he. Colonel Wood, would 

80 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

take command of General Young's brigade, and 
Colonel Carroll, of General Sumner's brigade. 

"You will break camp and move forward at 
four o'clock," he said. It was then three o'clock, 
and apparently the order to move forward at four 
had been given to each regiment at nearly the 
same time, for they all struck their tents and 
stepped down into the trail together. It was as 
though fifteen regiments were encamped along the 
sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and were all ordered 
at the same moment to move into it and march 
downtown. If Fifth Avenue were ten feet wide, 
one can imagine the confusion. 

General Chaffee was at General Lawton's head- 
quarters, and they stood apart whispering to- 
gether about the march they were to take to El 
Caney. Just over their heads the balloon was 
ascending for the first time and its great glisten- 
ing bulk hung just above the tree tops, and the 
men in different regiments, picking their way 
along the trail, gazed up at it open-mouthed. 
The head-quarters camp was crowded. After a 
week of inaction the army, at a moment's notice, 
was moving forward, and every one had ridden 
in haste to learn why. 

There were attaches, in strange uniforms, self- 
important Cuban generals, officers from the flag- 
Si 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

ship In ew York, and an army of photographers. 
At the side of the camp, double hnes of soldiers 
passed slowly along the two paths of the muddy 
road, while, between them, aides dashed up and 
down, splashing them with dirty water, and shout- 
ng, **You will come up at once, sir." "You will 
not attempt to enter the trail yet, sir." ** General 
Sumner's compliments, and why are you not in 
your place .?" 

Twelve thousand men, with their eyes fixed on 
a balloon, and treading on each other's heels in 
three inches of mud, move slowly, and after three 
hours, it seemed as though every man in the 
United States was under arms and stumbling and 
slipping down that trail. The lines passed until 
the moon rose. They seemed endless, intermina- 
ble; there were cavalry mounted and dismounted, 
artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers. 
Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black 
and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they 
were still stumbling and slipping forward. 

General Sumner's head-quarters tent was 
pitched to the right of El Poso hill. Below us 
lay the basin a mile and a half in length, and a 
mile and a half wide, from which a white mist was 
rising. Near us, drowned under the mist, seven 
thousand men were sleeping, and, farther to the 

82 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

right, General Chaffee's five thousand were lying 
under the bushes along the trails to El Caney, 
waiting to march on it and eat it up before break- 
fast. 

The place hardly needs a map to explain it. 
The trails were like a pitchfork, with its prongs 
touching the hills of San Juan. The long handle 
of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had 
just come, the joining of the handle and the 
prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay half-way 
along the right prong, the left one was the trail 
down which, in the morning, the troops were to 
be hurled upon San Juan. It was as yet an ut- 
terly undiscovered country. Three miles away, 
across the basin of mist, we could see the street 
lamps of Santiago shining over the San Juan 
hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung white 
and clear in the dark purple sky, pierced with 
millions of white stars. As we turned in, there 
was just a little something in the air which made 
saying "good-night" a gentle farce, for no one 
went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at 
the stars, and after a long silence, and much rest- 
less turning on the blanket which we shared to- 
gether, the second lieutenant said: "So, if any- 
thing happens to me, to-morrow, you'll see she 
gets them, won't you.?" Before the moon rose 

83 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist 
that night was either killed or wounded; but 
the second lieutenant was sitting on the edge of 
a Spanish rifle-pit, dirty, sweaty, and weak for 
food, but victorious, and the unknown she did 
not get them. 

El Caney had not yet thrown off her blanket 
of mist before Capron's battery opened on it 
from a ridge two miles in the rear. The plan for 
the day was that El Caney should fall in an hour. 
The plan for the day is interesting chiefly be- 
cause it is so diflFerent from what happened. 
According to the plan the army was to advance 
in two divisions along the two trails. Incident- 
ally, General Lawton's division was to pick up El 
Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated, his 
division was to continue forward and join hands 
on the right with the divisions of General Sumner 
and General Kent. The army was then to rest 
for that night in the woods, half a mile from San 
Juan. 

On the following morning it was to attack San 
Juan on the two flanks, under cover of artillery. 
The objection to this plan, which did not appar- 
ently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that 
an army of twelve thousand men, sleeping within 
five hundred yards of the enemy's rifle-pits, might 

84 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad night. 
As we discovered the next day, not only the five 
hundred yards, but the whole basin was covered 
by the fire from the rifle-pits. Even by daylight, 
when it was possible to seek some slight shelter, 
the army could not remain in the woods, but ac- 
cording to the plan it was expected to bivouac 
for the night in those woods, and in the morning 
to manoeuvre and deploy and march through 
them to the two flanks of San Juan. How the 
enemy was to be hypnotized while this was going 
forward it is difficult to understand. 

According to this programme, Capron's battery 
opened on El Caney and Grimes's battery opened 
on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan. 
The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, 
and the firing, as was discovered later, was not 
very effective. The battery used black powder, 
and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain 
of smoke hung over the gun for fully a minute 
before the gunners could see the San Juan trenches, 
which was chiefly important because for a full 
minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on 
which the battery stood was like a sugar-loaf. 
Behind it was the farm-house of El Poso, the only 
building in sight within a radius of a mile, and 
in it were Cuban soldiers and other non-combat- 

85 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

ants. The Rough Riders had been ordered to 
halt in the yard of the farm-house and the artillery 
horses were drawn up in it, under the lee of the 
hill. The First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry 
were encamped a hundred yards from the battery 
along the ridge. They might as sensibly have 
been ordered to paint the rings in a target while 
a company was firing at the bulFs-eye. To our 
first twenty shots the enemy made no reply; when 
they did it was impossible, owing to their using 
smokeless powder, to locate their guns. Their 
third shell fell in among the Cubans in the block- 
house and among the Rough Riders and the men 
of the First and Tenth Cavalry, killing some and 
wounding many. These casualties were utterly 
unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of who- 
ever placed the men within fifty yards of guns in 
action. 

A quarter of an hour after the firing began 
from El Poso one of General Shafter's aides di- 
rected General Sumner to advance with his divis- 
ion down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the 
edge of the woods. 

"What am I to do then?" asked General 
Sumner. 

"You are to await further orders," the aide 
answered. 

86 




u .B 



O ■= 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

As a matter of fact and history this was prob- 
ably the last order General Sumner received from 
General Shafter, until the troops of his division 
had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impos- 
sible to get word to General Shafter, the trail lead- 
ing to his head-quarters tent, three miles in the 
rear, being blocked by the soldiers of the First 
and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by 
Lawton's division. General Sumner led the Sixth, 
Third, and Ninth Cavalry and the Rough Riders 
down the trail, with instructions for the First and 
Tenth to follow. The trail, virgin as yet from 
the foot of an American soldier, was as wide as 
its narrowest part, which was some ten feet 
across. At places it was as wide as Broadway, 
but only for such short distances that it was 
necessary for the men to advance in column, in 
double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on 
either side was all but impenetrable, and when 
the officers and men had once assembled into the 
basin, they could only guess as to what lay before 
them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile 
the country became more open, and General Sum- 
ner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half-mile 
away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the 
San Juan River, ran across the trail at this point, 
and another stream crossed it again two hundred 

87 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

yards farther on. The troops were halted at this 
first stream, some crossing it, and others deploy- 
ing in single file to the right. Some were on the 
banks of the stream, others at the edge of the 
woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high 
grass which was so high that it stopped the wind, 
and so hot that it almost choked and suffocated 
those who lay in it. 

The enemy saw the advance and began firing 
with pitiless accuracy into the jammed and 
crowded trail and along the whole border of the 
woods. There was not a single yard of ground 
for a mile to the rear which was not inside the 
zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return 
the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. 
Some of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy 
quite clearly and the men in them, but many saw 
nothing but the bushes under which they lay, and 
the high grass which seemed to burn when they 
pressed against it. It was during this period of 
waiting that the greater number of our men were 
killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles star- 
ing at the waving green stuff around them, while 
the bullets drove past incessantly, with savage 
insistence, cutting the grass again and again in 
hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang 
from the ground and sank back again with a 

88 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

groan, or rolled to one side clinging silently to an 
arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital stew- 
ards passed continually, drawing the wounded 
back to the streams, where they laid them in long 
rows, their feet touching the water's edge and their 
bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and 
down the lines, and through the fords of the 
streams, mounted aides drove their horses at a 
gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on 
a church, and one after another paid the price of 
his position and fell from his horse wounded or 
dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving an 
order, shot through the forehead behind both 
eyes; Captain O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he 
said, "There is no Spanish bullet made that can 
kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was 
shot out of his saddle. 

Hidden in the trees above the streams, and 
above the trail, sharp-shooters and guerillas added 
a fresh terror to the wounded. There was no 
hiding from them. Their bullets came from every 
side. Their invisible smoke helped to keep their 
hiding-places secret, and in the incessant shriek of 
shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was diffi- 
cult to locate the reports of their rifles. They 
spared neither the wounded nor recognized the 
Red Cross; they killed the surgeons and the 

89 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

Stewards carrying the litters, and killed the 
wounded men on the litters. A guerilla in a tree 
above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the 
breast while I was helping him carry Captain 
Morton Henry to the dressing-station, the ball 
passing down through him, and a second shot, 
from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he 
lay on the ground where we had dropped him. 
He was already twice wounded and so covered 
with blood that no one could have mistaken his 
condition. The surgeons at work along the 
stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast 
aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets 
they feared, though they passed continuously, but 
too high to do their patients further harm, but 
the bullets of the sharp-shooters which struck fairly 
in among them, splashing in the water and scat- 
tering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets 
were as different as is the sharp pop of a soda- 
water bottle from the buzzing of an angry wasp. 

For a time it seemed as though every second 
man was either killed or wounded; one came upon 
them lying behind the bush, under which they 
had crawled with some strange idea that it would 
protect them, or crouched under the bank of 
the stream, or lying on their stomachs and lap- 
ping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty 

90 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

dogs. As to their suffering, the wounded were 
magnificently silent, they neither complained nor 
groaned nor cursed. 

"I've got a punctured tire," was their grim 
answer to inquiries. White men and colored 
men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each 
lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so 
that he might be carried away to safety, for the 
wounded were in as great danger after they were 
hit as though they were in the firing line, but 
none questioned nor complained. 

I came across Lieutenant Roberts, of the Tenth 
Cavalry, lying under the roots of a tree beside 
the stream with three of his colored troopers 
stretched around him. He was shot through the 
intestines, and each of the three men with him 
was shot in the arm or leg. They had been over- 
looked or forgotten, and we stumbled upon them 
only by the accident of losing our way. They 
had no knowledge as to how the battle was going 
or where their comrades were or where the ene- 
my was. At any moment, for all they knew, the 
Spaniards might break through the bushes about 
them. It was a most lonely picture, the young 
lieutenant, half naked, and wet with his own 
blood, sitting upright beside the empty stream, 
and his three followers crouching at his feet like 

91 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

three faithful watch-dogs, each wearing his red 
badge of courage, with his black skin tanned to 
a haggard gray, and with his eyes fixed patiently 
on the white lips of his officer. When the white 
soldiers with me offered to carry him back to the 
dressing-station, the negroes resented it stiffly. 
"If the Lieutenant had been able to move, we 
would have carried him away long ago," said the 
sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm 
was shattered. 

**Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me,'* 
Roberts added, cheerfully. **They must be very 
busy. I can wait." 

As yet, with all these killed and wounded, 
we had accomplished nothing — except to obey 
orders — ^which was to await further orders. The 
observation balloon hastened the end. It came 
blundering down the trail, and stopped the ad- 
vance of the First and Tenth Cavalry, and was 
sent up directly over the heads of our men to 
observe what should have been observed a week 
before by scouts and reconnoitring parties. A 
balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough 
in the air to be out of range of the enemy's fire 
may some day prove itself to be of use and value. 
But a balloon on the advance line, and only fifty 
feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an 

92 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

invitation to the enemy to kill everything be- 
neath it. And the enemy responded to the invi- 
tation. A Spaniard might question if he could 
hit a man, or a number of men, hidden in the 
bushes, but had no doubt at all as to his ability 
to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hun- 
dred yards distant, and so all the trenches fired 
at it at once, and the men of the First and Tenth, 
packed together directly behind it, received the 
full force of the bullets. The men lying directly 
below it received the shrapnel which was timed 
to hit it, and which at last, fortunately, did hit 
it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of 
such hell of fire and heat, that the heat in itself, 
had there been no bullets, would have been re- 
membered for its cruelty. Men gasped on their 
backs, Hke fishes in the bottom of a boat, their 
heads burning inside and out, their limbs too 
heavy to move. They had been rushed here and 
rushed there wet with sweat and wet with ford- 
ing the streams, under a sun that would have 
made moving a fan an efibrt, and they lay pros- 
trate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame, 
and their tongues sticking out, and their eyes 
rolling. All through this the volleys from the 
rifle-pits sputtered and rattled, and the bullets 
sang continuously like the wind through the rig- 

93 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

ging in a gale, shrapnel whined and broke, and 
still no order came from General Shafter. 

Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff, 
rode down the trail to learn what had delayed 
the First and Tenth, and was hailed by Colonel 
Derby, who was just descending from the shat- 
tered balloon. 

"I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel 
Derby shouted; "they are firing at our troops." 
That was part of the information contributed by 
the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to 
history. 

General Kent's division, which, according to 
the plan, was to have been held in reserve, had 
been rushed up in the rear of the First and Tenth, 
and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish order 
to the right. The trail was now completely 
blocked by Kent's division. Lawton's division, 
which was to have re-enforced on the right, had 
not appeared, but incessant firing from the direc- 
tion of El Caney showed that he and Chaffee 
were fighting mightily. The situation was desper- 
ate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail 
for two miles behind them was wedged with 
men. They could not remain where they were, 
for they were being shot to pieces. There was 
only one thing they could do — go forward and 

94 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

take the San Juan hills by assault. It was as 
desperate as the situation itself. To charge 
earthworks held by men with modern rifles, and 
using modern artillery, until after the earthworks 
have been shaken by artillery, and to attack 
them in advance and not in the flanks, are both 
impossible military propositions. But this cam- 
paign had not been conducted according to mil- 
itary rules, and a series of military blunders 
had brought seven thousand American soldiers 
into a chute of death from which there was no 
escape except by taking the enemy who held 
it by the throat and driving him out and beat- 
ing him down. So the generals of divisions and 
brigades stepped back and relinquished their com- 
mand to the regimental officers and the enlisted 
men. 

"We can do nothing more," they virtually said. 
"There is the enemy.'* 

Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from 
the woods behind the line of the Ninth, and find- 
ing its men lying in his way, shouted : " If you 
don't wish to go forward, let my men pass." The 
junior officers of the Ninth, with their negroes, 
instantly sprang into line with the Rough Riders, 
and charged at the blue block-house on the right. 

I speak of Roosevelt first because, with Gen- 
95 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

eral Hawkins, who led Kent's division, notably 
the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was, without 
doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. 
General Hawkins, with hair as white as snow, 
and yet far in advance of men thirty years his 
junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined 
to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roose- 
velt, mounted high on horseback, and charging 
the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made 
you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore 
on his sombrero a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a 
la Havelock, which, as he advanced, floated out 
straight behind his head, like a guidon. After- 
ward, the men of his regiment who followed this 
flag, adopted a polka-dot handkerchief as the 
badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers 
were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no 
one can claim that any two men, or any one man, 
was more brave or more daring, or showed great- 
er courage in that slow, stubborn advance, than 
did any of the others. Some one asked one of 
the officers if he had any difficulty in making his 
men follow him. "No,'' he answered, "I had 
some difficulty in keeping up with them." As one 
of the brigade generals said: "San Juan was 
won by the regimental officers and men. We 
had as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight 

96 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

who calls *time.' We called 'time' and they 
did the fighting." 

I have seen many illustrations and pictures of 
this charge on the San Juan hills, but none of 
them seem to show it just as I remember it. In 
the picture-papers the men are running uphill 
swiftly and gallantly, in regular formation, rank 
after rank, with flags flying, their eyes aflame, 
and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in 
long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering 
weight of numbers. Instead of which I think 
the thing which impressed one the most, when 
our men started from cover, was that they were 
so few. It seemed as if some one had made an 
awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct was 
to call to them to come back. You felt that 
some one had blundered and that these few men 
were blindly following out some madman's mad 
order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely 
absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such 
a sacrifice was what held you. 

They had no glittering bayonets, they were 
not massed in regular array. There were a few 
men in advance, bunched together, and creeping 
up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared 
and flashed with flame. The men held their guns 
pressed across their chests and stepped heavily 

97 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

as they climbed. Behind these first few, spread- 
ing out Hke a fan, were single lines of men, slip- 
ping and scrambling in the smooth grass, mov- 
ing forward with difficulty, as though they were 
wading waist high through water, moving slowly, 
carefully, with strenuous effort. It was much 
more wonderful than any swinging charge could 
have been. They walked to greet death at every 
step, many of them, as they advanced, sinking 
suddenly or pitching forward and disappearing 
in the high grass, but the others waded on, stub- 
bornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creep- 
ing higher and higher up the hill. It was as in- 
evitable as the rising tide. It was a miracle of 
self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which 
one watched breathless with wonder. The fire of 
the Spanish riflemen, who still stuck bravely to 
their posts, doubled and trebled in fierceness, the 
crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed 
roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But 
the blue line crept steadily up and on, and then, 
near the top, the broken fragments gathered to- 
gether with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards 
appeared for a moment outlined against the sky 
and poised for instant flight, fired a last volley, 
and fled before the swift-moving wave that leaped 
and sprang after them. 

98 



The Battle of San Juan Hill 

The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders 
rushed to the block-house together, the men of the 
Sixth, of the Third, of the Tenth Cavalry, of the 
Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces 
along the crest of the hills beyond, and opened 
upon the vanishing enemy. They drove the yel- 
low silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of their 
country into the soft earth of the trenches, and 
then sank down and looked back at the road 
they had climbed and swung their hats in the air. 
And from far overhead, from these few figures 
perched on the Spanish rifle-pits, with their flags 
planted among the empty cartridges of the enemy, 
and overlooking the walls of Santiago, came, 
faintly, the sound of a tired, broken cheer. 



99 



Ill 

THE TAKING OF COAMO 

THIS is the inside story of the surrender, dur- 
ing the Spanish War, of the town of Coamo. 
It is written by the man to whom the town sur- 
rendered. Immediately after the surrender this 
same man became MiHtary Governor of Coamo. 
He held office for fully twenty minutes. 

Before beginning this story the reader must 
forget all he may happen to know of this particu- 
lar triumph of the Porto Rican Expedition. He 
must forget that the taking of Coamo has always 
been credited to Major-General James H. Wilson, 
who on that occasion commanded Captain An- 
derson's Battery, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania, 
Troop C of Brooklyn, and under General Ernst, 
the Second and Third Wisconsin Volunteers. He 
must forget that in the records of the War Depart- 
ment all the praise, and it is of the highest, for 
this victory is bestowed upon General Wilson and 
his four thousand soldiers. Even the writer of 
this, when he cabled an account of the event to his 
paper, gave, with every one else, the entire credit 
to General Wison. And ever since his conscience 

lOI 



The Taking of Coamo 

has upbraided him. His only claim for tolerance 
as a war correspondent has been that he always 
has stuck to the facts, and now he feels that in the 
sacred cause of history his friendship and admira- 
tion for General Wilson, that veteran of the Civil, 
PhiHppine, and Chinese Wars, must no longer 
stand in the way of his duty as an accurate re- 
porter. He no longer can tell a lie. He must at 
last own up that he himself captured Coamo. 

On the morning of the 9th of August, 1898, the 
Sixteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers arrived on the 
outskirts of that town. In order to get there they 
had spent the night in crawling over mountain 
trails and scrambling through streams and ra- 
vines. It was General Wilson's plan that by this 
flanking night march the Sixteenth Pennsylvania 
would reach the road leading from Coamo to San 
Juan in time to cut off the retreat of the Spanish 
garrison, when General Wilson, with the main 
body, attacked it from the opposite side. 

At seven o'clock in the morning General Wilson 
began the frontal attack by turning loose the 
artillery on a block-house, which threatened his 
approach, and by advancing the Wisconsin Vol- 
unteers. The cavalry he sent to the right to cap- 
ture Los Banos. At eight o'clock, from where the 
main body rested, two miles from Coamo, we 

102 




Officers watching the artillery play on Coamo 

Drawn by F. C. Yohn from a photograph by the Author 



The Taking of Coamo 

could hear the Sixteenth Pennsylvania open its 
attack and instantly become hotly engaged. The 
enemy returned the fire fiercely, and the firing from 
both sides at once became so severe that it was 
evident the Pennsylvania Volunteers either would 
take the town without the main body, or that 
they would greatly need its assistance. The ar- 
tillery was accordingly advanced one thousand 
yards and the infantry was hurried forward. 
The Second Wisconsin approached Coamo along 
the main road from Ponce, the Third Wisconsin 
through fields of grass to the right of the road, 
until the two regiments met at the ford by which 
the Banos road crosses the Coamo River. But 
before they met, from a position near the artillery, 
I had watched through my glasses the Second 
Wisconsin with General Ernst at its head advan- 
cing along the main road, and as, when I saw them, 
they were near the river, I guessed they would 
continue across the bridge and that they soon 
would be in the town. 

As the firing from the Sixteenth still continued, 
it seemed obvious that General Ernst would be 
the first general officer to enter Coamo, and to 
receive its surrender. I had never seen five thou- 
sand people surrender to one man, and it seemed 
that, if I were to witness that ceremony, my best 

103 



The Taking of Coamo 

plan was to abandon the artillery and, as quickly 
as possible, pursue the Second Wisconsin. I did 
not want to share the spectacle of the surrender 
with my brother correspondents, so I tried to steal 
away from the three who were present. They 
were Thomas^^ F. Millard, Walstein Root of the 
SuHy and Horace Thompson. By dodging through 
a coffee central I came out a half mile from them 
and in advance of the Third Wisconsin. There I 
encountered two "boy officers," Captain John C. 
Breckenridge and Lieutenant Fred. S. Titus, who 
had temporarily abandoned their thankless duties 
in the Commissariat Department in order to seek 
death or glory in the skirmish-line. They wanted 
to know where I was going, and when I explained, 
they declared that when Coamo surrendered they 
also were going to be among those present. 

So we slipped away from the main body and 
rode off as an independent organization. But 
from the bald ridge, where the artillery was still 
hammering the town, the three correspondents and 
Captain Alfred Paget, Her Majesty's naval attache, 
observed our attempt to steal a march on General 
Wilson's forces, and pursued us and soon over- 
took us. 

We now were seven, or to be exact, eight, for 
with Mr. Millard was "Jimmy," who in times of 

104 



The Taking of Coamo 

peace sells papers in Herald Square, and in times 
of war carries Mr. Millard's copy to the press 
post. We were much nearer the ford than the 
bridge, so we waded the "drift " and started on a 
gallop along the mile of military road that lay 
between us and Coamo. The firing from the 
Sixteenth Pennsylvania had slackened, but as we 
advanced it became sharper, more insistent, and 
seemed to urge us to greater speed. Across the 
road were dug rough rifle-pits which had the look 
of having been but that moment abandoned. 
What had been intended for the breakfast of the 
enemy was burning in pots over tiny fires, little 
heaps of cartridges lay in readiness upon the 
edges of each pit, and an arm-chair, in which a 
sentry had kept a comfortable lookout, lay sprawl- 
ing in the middle of the road. The huts that 
faced it were empty. The only living things we 
saw were the chickens and pigs in the kitchen- 
gardens. On either hand was every evidence of 
hasty and panic-stricken flight. We rejoiced at 
these evidences of the fact that the Wisconsin Vol- 
unteers had swept all before them. Our rejoicings 
were not entirely unselfish. It was so quiet ahead 
that some one suggested the town had already 
surrendered. But that would have been too bitter 
a disappointment, and as the firing from the fur- 



The Taking of Coamo 

ther side of Coamo still continued, we refused to 
believe it, and whipped the ponies into greater 
haste. We were now only a quarter of a mile dis- 
tant from the built-up portion of Coamo, where 
the road turned sharply into the main street of the 
town. 

Captain Paget, who in the absence of the Brit- 
ish military attache on account of sickness, accom- 
panied the army as a guest of General Wilson, gave 
way to thoughts of etiquette. 

"Will General Wilson think I should have 
waited for him.^*" he shouted. The words were 
jolted out of him as he rose in the saddle. The 
noise of the ponies' hoofs made conversation diffi- 
cult. I shouted back that the presence of General 
Ernst in the town made it quite proper for a foreign 
attache to enter it. 

"It must have surrendered by now," I shouted. 
"It's been half an hour since Ernst crossed the 
bridge." 

At these innocent words, all my companions 
tugged violently at their bridles and shouted 
"Whoa!" 

"Crossed the bridge?" they yelled. "There is 
no bridge! The bridge is blown up! If he 
hasn't crossed by the ford, he isn't in the town!" 

Then, in my turn, I shouted "Whoa!" 
io6 



The Taking of Coamo 

But by now the Porto Rican ponies had de- 
cided that this was the race of their lives, and each 
had made up his mind that, Mexican bit or no 
Mexican bit, until he had carried his rider first 
into the town of Coamo, he would not be halted. 
As I tugged helplessly at my Mexican bit, I saw 
how I had made my mistake. The volunteers, 
on finding the bridge destroyed, instead of march- 
ing upon Coamo had turned to the ford, the same 
ford which we had crossed half an hour before they 
reached it. They now were behind us. Instead 
of a town which had surrendered to a thousand 
American soldiers, we, seven unarmed men and 
Jimmy, were being swept into a hostile city as fast 
as the enemy's ponies could take us there. 

Breckenridge and Titus hastily put the blame 
upon me. 

"If we get into trouble with the General for 
this," they shouted, "it will be your fault. You 
told us Ernst was in the town with a thousand 



men." 



I shouted back that no one regretted the fact 
that he was not more keenly than I did myself. 

Titus and Breckenridge each glanced at a new, 
full-dress sword. 

"We might as well go in," they shouted, "and 
take it anyway!" I decided that Titus and Breck- 

107 



The Taking of Coamo 

enridge were wasted in the Commissariat Depart- 
ment. 

The three correspondents looked more comfort- 
able. 

"If you officers go in," they cried, "the General 
can't blame us,'* and they dug their spurs into the 
ponies. 

"Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. 
"That's all very w^ell for you chaps, but what pro- 
tects me if the Admiralty finds out I have led a 
charge on a Spanish garrison.?" 

But Paget's pony refused to consider the feel- 
ings of the Lords of the Admiralty. As success- 
fully Paget might have tried to pull back a row- 
boat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, 
Millard, in order that Jimmy might be the first to 
reach Ponce with despatches, had mounted him 
on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he already 
was far in the lead. His sporting instincts, nursed 
in the pool-rooms of the Tenderloin and at Gut- 
tenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good. 
It never would do to have a newsboy tell in New 
York that he had beaten the correspondents of 
the papers he sold in the streets; nor to permit 
commissioned officers to take the dust of one who 
never before had ridden on anything but a cable 
car. So we all raced forward and, bunched to- 

io8 



The Taking of Coamo 

gether, swept into the main street of Coamo. It 
was gratefully empty. There were no American 
soldiers, but, then, neither were there any Spanish i 
soldiers. Across the street stretched more rifle- 
pits and barricades of iron pipes, but in sight there 
was neither friend nor foe. On the stones of the 
deserted street the galloping hoofs sounded like 
the advance of a whole regiment of cavalry. Their 
clatter gave us a most comfortable feeling. We 
almost could imagine the towns-people believing 
us to be the Rough Riders themselves and fleeing 
before us. 

And then, the empty street seemed to threaten 
an ambush. We thought hastily of sunken mines, 
of soldiers crouching behind the barriers, behind 
the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering 
us from the latticed balconies overhead. Until at 
last, when the silence had become alert and men- 
acing, a lonely man dashed into the middle of the 
street, hurled a white flag in front of us, and then 
dived headlong under the porch of a house. The 
next instant, as though at a signal, a hundred citi- 
zens, each with a white flag in both hands, ran from 
cover, waving their banners, and gasping in weak 
and terror-shaken tones, "Vivan los Americanos." 

We tried to pull up, but the ponies had not 
yet settled among themselves which of us had 

109 



The Taking of Coamo 

won, and carried us to the extreme edge of the 
town, where a precipice seemed to invite them to 
stop, and we fell off into the arms of the Porto 
Ricans. They brought us wine in tin cans, cigars, 
borne in the aprons and mantillas of their women- 
folk, and demijohns of native rum. They were 
abject, trembling, tearful. They made one in- 
stantly forget that the moment before he had been 
extremely frightened. 

One of them spoke to me the few words of 
Spanish with which I had an acquaintance. He 
told me he was the Alcalde, and that he begged 
to surrender into my hands the town of Coamo. 
I led him instantly to one side. I was afraid that 
if I did not take him up he would surrender to 
Paget or to Jimmy. I bade him conduct me to 
his official residence. He did so, and gave me 
the key to the cartel, a staff of office of gold and 
ebony, and the flag of the town, which he had hid- 
den behind his writing-desk. It was a fine Spanish 
flag with the coat of arms embroidered in gold. 
I decided that, with whatever else I might part, 
that flag would always be mine, that the chance of 
my again receiving the surrender of a town of five 
thousand people was slender, and that this token 
would be wrapped around me in my coffin. I ac- 
cordingly hid it in my poncho and strapped it to 

no 



The Taking of Coamo 

my saddle. Then I appointed a hotel-keeper, who 
spoke a little English, as my official interpreter, 
and told the Alcalde that I was now Military Gov- 
ernor, Mayor, and Chief of Police, and that I \ 
wanted the seals of the town. He gave me a rub- 
ber stamp with a coat of arms cut in it, and I wrote 
myself three letters, which, to insure their safe 
arrival, I addressed to three different places, and 
stamped them with the rubber seals. In time all 
three reached me, and I now have them as docu- 
mentary proof of the fact that for twenty minutes 
I was Military Governor and Mayor of Coamo. 

During that brief administration I detailed Titus 
and Breckenridge to wigwag the Sixteenth Penn- 
sylvania that we had taken the town, and that it 
was now safe for them to enter. In order to com- 
promise Paget they used his red silk handkerchief. 
Root I detailed to conciliate the inhabitants by 
drinking with every one of them. He tells me he 
carried out my instructions to the letter. I also 
settled one assault and battery case, and put the 
chief offender under arrest. At least, I told the 
official interpreter to inform him that he was 
under arrest, but as I had no one to guard him 
he grew tired of being under arrest and went off 
to celebrate his emancipation from the rule of 
Spain. 

Ill 



The Taking of Coamo 

My administration came to an end in twenty 
minutes, when General Wilson rode into Coamo 
at the head of his staff and three thousand men. 
He wore a white helmet, and he looked the part 
of the conquering hero so satisfactorily that I for- 
got I was Mayor and ran out into the street to snap 
a picture of him. He looked greatly surprised and 
asked me what I was doing in his town. The 
tone in which he spoke caused me to decide that, 
after all, I would not keep the flag of Coamo, I 
pulled it off my saddle and said: "General, it's 
too long a story to tell you now, but here is the flag 
of the town. It's the first Spanish flag" — and it 
was — "that has been captured in Porto Rico." 

General Wilson smiled again and accepted the 
flag. He and about four thousand other soldiers 
think it belongs to them. But the truth will out. 
Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of 
a vote of thanks from Congress, a pension, or any 
other trifle, like prize-money, will show the Ameri- 
can people to whom that flag really belongs. 

I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven 
heroes of Coamo, or eight, if you include "Jimmy," 
will be told in song and story. Some one else will 
write the song. This is the story. 



112 



IV 
THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL 

WHEN I was a boy I thought battles were 
fought in waste places selected for the pur- 
pose. I argued from the fact that when our school 
nine wished to play ball it was forced into the 
suburbs to search for a vacant lot. I thought op- 
posing armies also marched out of town until they 
reached some desolate spot where there were 
no window panes, and where their cannon-balls 
would hurt no one but themselves. Even later, 
when I saw battles fought among villages, artil- 
lery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls 
breached for rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, 
it always seemed as though the generals had elected 
to fight in such surroundings through an inex- 
cusable striving after theatrical effect — as though 
they wished to furnish the war correspondents 
with a chance for descriptive writing. With the 
horrors of war as horrible as they are without any 
aid from these contrasts, their presence always 
seemed not only sinful but bad art; as unneces- 
sary as turning a red light on the dying gladiator. 
There are so many places which are scenes set 
113 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

apart for battles — places that look as though Nat- 
ure had condemned them for just such sacrifices. 
Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of 
veldt, is one of these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, 
and, in Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photo- 
graphs have made all of us familiar with the vast, 
desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These are 
among the waste places of the earth — barren, de- 
serted, fit meeting grounds only for men whose 
object in life for the moment is to kill men. Were 
you shown over one of these places, and told, 
"A battle was fought here," you would answer, 
"Why, of course!" 

But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where 
the United States army fought its solitary and 
modest battle with Spain, you might many times 
pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought 
of it at all, as only a pretty site for a bungalow, 
as a place obviously intended for orchards and 
gardens. 

On July 1st, twelve years ago, when the Ameri- 
can army came upon it out of the jungle the place 
wore a partial disguise. It still was an irregular 
ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable 
curves, and in some places a steep, straight front. 
But above the steepest, highest front frowned an 
aggressive block-house, and on all the slopes and 

114 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

along the sky-line were rows of yellow trenches, 
and at the base a cruel cat's cradle of barbed wire. 
It was like the face of a pretty woman behind the 
bars of a visor. I find that on the day of the fight 
twelve years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan 
Hill reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard 
in New England." That was how it may have 
looked when the regulars were climbing up the 
steep front to capture the block-house, and when 
the cavalry and Rough Riders, having taken 
Kettle Hill, were running down its opposite slope, 
past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan Hill 
which lies to the right of the block-house. It 
may then have looked like a sunny New England 
orchard, but before night fell the intrenching tools 
had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible 
aspect." And after that, hour after hour, and 
day after day, we saw the hill eaten up by our 
trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents, 
and torn apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs 
of logs and broken branches weighed down by 
earth and stones and looking like the pit mouths to 
many mines. That probably is how most of the 
American army last saw San Juan Hill, and that 
probably is how it best remembers it — as a fortified 
camp. That was twelve years ago. When I 
revisited it, San Juan Hill was again a sunny, 

115 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

smiling farm land, the trenches planted with vege- 
tables, the roofs of the bomb-proofs fallen in and 
buried beneath creeping vines, and the barbed- 
w^ire entanglements holding in check only the 
browsing cattle. 

San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill, but the most 
prominent of a ridge of hills, with Kettle Hill a 
quarter of a mile away on the edge of the jungle 
and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake. In 
the local nomenclature Kettle Hill, which is the 
name given to it by the Rough Riders, has always 
been known as San Juan Hill, with an added 
name to distinguish it from the other San Juan 
Hill of greater renown. 

The days we spent on those hills were so rich in 
incident and interest and were filled with moments 
of such excitement, of such pride in one's fellow- 
countrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of 
laughter and good-fellowship, that one supposed 
he might return after even twenty years and recog- 
nize every detail of the ground. But a shorter 
time has made startling and confusing changes. 
Now a visitor will find that not until after several 
different visits, and by walking and riding foot by 
foot over the hills, can he make them fall into 
line as he thinks he once knew them. Immedi- 
ately around San Juan Hill itself there has been 

ii6 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

some attempt made to preserve the ground as a 
public park. A barbed-wire fence, with a gate- 
way, encircles the block-house, which has been 
converted into a home for the caretaker of the 
park, and then, skirting the road to Santiago 
to include the tree under which the surrender 
was arranged, stretches to the left of the block- 
house to protect a monument. This monument 
was erected by Americans to commemorate the 
battle. It is now rapidly falling to pieces, but 
there still is enough of it intact to show the 
pencilled scribblings and autographs of tourists 
who did not take part in the battle, but who in 
this public manner show that they approve of its 
results. The public park is less than a quarter 
of a mile square. Except for it no other effort 
has been made either by Cubans or Americans 
to designate the lines that once encircled and 
menaced Santiago, and Nature, always at her 
best under a tropical sun, has done all in her 
power to disguise and forever obliterate the scene 
of the army's one battle. Those features which 
still remain unchanged are very few. The Treaty 
Tree, now surrounded by a tall fence, is one, the 
block-house is another. The little lake in which, 
even when the bullets were dropping, the men 
used to bathe and wash their clothes, the big 

117 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

iron sugar kettle that gave a new name to Kettle 
Hill, and here and there a trench hardly deeper 
than a ploughed furrow, and nearly hidden by 
growing plants, are the few landmarks that remain. 
Of the camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, 
Bates, Sumner, and Wheeler, of Colonels Leonard 
Wood and Theodore Roosevelt, there are but 
the slightest traces. The Bloody Bend, as some 
call it, in the San Juan River, as some call that 
stream, seems to have entirely disappeared. At 
least, it certainly was not where it should have been, 
and the place the hotel guides point out to unsus- 
pecting tourists bears not the slightest physical re- 
semblance to that ford. In twelve years, during 
one of which there has been in Santiago the most 
severe rainfall in sixty years, the San Juan stream 
has carried away its banks and the trees that 
lined them, and the trails that should mark where 
the ford once crossed have so altered and so many 
new ones have been added, that the exact location 
of the once famous dressing station is now most 
difficult, if not impossible, to determine. To es- 
tabHsh the sites of the old camping grounds is 
but little less difficult. The head-quarters of Gen- 
eral Wheeler are easy to recognize, for the reason 
that the place selected was in a hollow, and the 
most unhealthy spot along the five miles of in- 

ii8 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

trench ments. It is about thirty yards from where 
the road turns to rise over the ridge to Santiago, 
and all the water from the hill pours into it as into 
a rain barrel. It was here that Troop G, Third 
Cavalry, under Major Hardee, as it was Wheeler's 
escort, was forced to bivouac, and where one-third 
of its number came down with fever. The camp 
of General Sam Sumner was some sixty yards to 
the right of the head-quarters of General Wheeler, 
on the high shoulder of the hill just above the 
camp of the engineers, who were on the side of the 
road opposite. The camps of Generals Chaffee, 
Lawton, Hawkins, Ludlow, and the positions 
and trenches taken and held by the different regi- 
ments under them one can place only relatively. 
One reason for this is that before our army at- 
tacked the hills all the underbrush and small 
trees that might conceal the advance of our men 
had been cleared away by the Spaniards, leaving 
the hill, except for the high crest, comparatively 
bare. To-day the hills are thick with young trees 
and enormous bushes. The alteration in the 
landscape is as marked as is the difference be- 
tween ground cleared for golf and the same spot 
planted with corn and fruit-trees. 

Of all the camps, the one that to-day bears the 
strongest evidences of its occupation is that of the 

119 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

Rough Riders. A part of the camp of that regi- 
ment, which was situated on the ridge some hun- 
dred feet from the Santiago road, was pitched 
under a clump of shade trees, and to-day, even 
after seven years, the trunks of these trees bear 
the names and initials of the men who camped 
beneath them.* These men will remember that 
when they took this hill they found that the fortifi- 
cations beneath the trees were partly made from 
the foundations of an adobe house. The red 
tiles from its roof still litter the ground. These 
tiles and the names cut in the bark of the trees 
determine absolutely the site of one-half of the 
camp, but the other half, where stood Tiffany's 
quick-firing gun and Parker's Gatling, has been 
almost obliterated. The tree under which Colonel 
Roosevelt pitched his tent I could not discover, 
and the trenches in which he used to sit with his 
officers and with the officers from the regiments 
of the regular army are now levelled to make a 
kitchen-garden. Sometimes the ex-President is 
said to have too generously given office and promo- 
tion to the friends he made in Cuba. These men 



* Some of the names and initials on the trees are as follows: J. 
P. Allen; Lynch; Luke Steed; Happy Mack, Rough Riders; Rus- 
sell; Ward; E. M. Lewis, C, 9th Cav.; Alex; E. K. T.; J. P. E.; 
W. N. D.; R. D. R.; I. W. S., sth U. S.; J. M. B.; J. M. T., 
C, 9th. 

120 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

he met in the trenches were then not necessarily 
his friends. To-day they are not necessarily his 
friends. They are the men the free Hfe of the 
rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand 
as the settled relations of home life and peace would 
never have permitted. At that time none of them 
guessed that the ''amateur colonel," to whom they 
talked freely as to a comrade, would be their 
Commander-in-Chief. They did not suspect that 
he would become even the next Governor of New 
York, certainly not that in a few years he would 
be the President of the United States. So they 
showed themselves to him frankly, unconsciously. 
They criticised, argued, disagreed, and he became 
familiar with the views, character, and worth of 
each, and remembered. The seeds planted in 
those half-obliterated trenches have borne greater 
results than ever will the kitchen-garden. 

The kitchen-garden is immediately on the crest 
of the hill, and near it a Cuban farmer has built a 
shack of mud and twigs and cultivated several 
acres of land. On Kettle Hill there are three 
more such shacks, and over all the hills the new 
tenants have strung stout barbed-wire fences and 
made new trails and reared wooden gateways. 
It was curious to find how greatly these modern 
improvements confused one's recollection of the 

121 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

landscape, and it was interesting, also, to find 
how the presence on the hills of 12,000 men and 
the excitement of the time magnified distances and 
disarranged the landscape. 

During the fight I walked along a portion of the 
Santiago road, and for many years I always have 
thought of that walk as extending over immense 
distances. It started from the top of San Juan 
Hill beside the block-house, where I had climbed 
to watch our artillery in action. By a mistake, the 
artillery had been sent there, and it remained ex- 
posed on the crest only about three minutes. 
During that brief moment the black powder it 
burned drew upon it the fire of every rifle in the 
Spanish line. To load his piece, each of our 
men was forced to crawl to it on his stomach, 
rise on one elbow in order to shove in the shell 
and lock the breech, and then, still flat on the 
ground, wriggle below the crest. In the three 
minutes three men were wounded and two killed; 
and the guns were withdrawn. I also withdrew. 
I withdrew first. Indeed, all that happened after 
the first three seconds of those three minutes is 
hearsay, for I was in the Santiago road at the 
foot of the hill and retreating briskly. This 
road also was under a cross-fire, which made 
it stretch in either direction to an interminable 

122 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

distance. I remember a government teamster 
driving a Studebaker wagon filled with ammuni- 
tion coming up at a gallop out of this interminable 
distance and seeking shelter against the base of 
the hill. Seated beside him was a small boy, 
freckled and sunburned, a stowaway from one of 
the transports. He was grandly happy and ex- 
cited, and his only fear was that he was not "under 
fire." From our coign of safety, with our backs 
to the hill, the teamster and I assured him that, 
on that point, he need feel no morbid doubt. But 
until a bullet embedded itself in the blue board 
of the wagon he was not convinced. Then with 
his jack-knife he dug it out and shouted with 
pleasure. "I guess the folks will have to believe 
I was in a battle now," he said. That coign of 
safety ceasing to be a coign of safety caused 
us to move on in search of another, and I 
came upon Sergeant Borrowe blocking the road 
with his dynamite gun. He and his brother 
and three regulars were busily correcting a 
hitch in its mechanism. An officer carrying an 
order along the line halted his sweating horse 
and gazed at the strange gun with professional 
knowledge. 

"That must be the dynamite gun I have heard 
so much about," he shouted. Borrowe saluted 

123 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

and shouted assent. The officer, greatly inter- 
ested, forgot his errand. 

"I'd Hke to see you fire it once," he said eagerly. 
Borrowe, delighted at the chance to exhibit his 
toy to a professional soldier, beamed with equal 
eagerness. 

"In just a moment, sir," he said; "this shell 
seems to have jammed a bit." The officer, for 
the first time seeing the shell stuck in the breech, 
hurriedly gathered up his reins. He seemed to 
be losing interest. With elaborate carelessness I 
began to edge off down the road. 

"Wait," Borrowe begged; "we'll have it out in 
a minute." 

Suddenly I heard the officer's voice raised wildly. 

"What — what," he gasped, "is that man doing 
with that axe .?" 

"He's helping me to get out this shell," said 
Borrowe. 

"Good God!" said the officer. Then he re- 
membered his errand. 

Until last year, when I again met young Bor- 
rowe gayly disporting himself at a lawn-tennis 
tournament at Mattapoisett, I did not know 
whether his brother's method of removing dyna- 
mite with an axe had been entirely successful. He 
said it worked all right. 

124 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

At the turn of the road I found Colonel Leon- 
ard Wood and a group of Rough Riders, who 
were busily intrenching. At the same moment 
Stephen Crane came up with "Jimmy" Hare, the 
man who has made the Russian-Japanese War 
famous. Crane walked to the crest and stood 
there as sharply outlined as a semaphore, observ- 
ing the enemy's lines, and instantly bringing upon 
himself and us the fire of many Mausers. With 
every one else. Wood was crouched below the crest 
and shouted to Crane to lie down. Crane, still 
standing, as though to get out of ear-shot, moved 
away, and Wood again ordered him to lie down. 
"You're drawing the fire on these men," Wood 
commanded. Although the heat — it was the ist 
of July in the tropics — was terrific. Crane wore a 
long India rubber rain-coat and was smoking a 
pipe. He appeared as cool as though he were 
looking down from a box at a theatre. I knew 
that to Crane, anything that savored of a pose 
was hateful, so, as I did not want to see him killed, 
I called, *' You're not impressing any one by doing 
that. Crane." As I hoped he would, he instantly 
dropped to his knees. When he crawled over to 
where we lay, I explained, "I knew that would 
fetch you," and he grinned, and said, "Oh, was 
that it?" 

125 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

A captain of the cavalry came up to Wood and 
asked permission to withdraw his troop from the 
top of the hill to a trench forty feet below the one 
they were in. "They can't possibly live where 
they are now," he explained, "and they're doing 
no good there, for they can't raise their heads to 
fire. In that lower trench they would be out of 
range themselves and would be able to fire back." 

"Yes," said Wood, "but all the other men in 
the first trench would see them withdraw, and 
the moral effect would be bad. They needn't 
attempt to return the enemy's fire, but they must 
not retreat." 

The officer looked as though he would like to 
argue. He was a West Point graduate and a 
full-fledged captain in the regular army. To 
him, Wood, in spite of his volunteer rank of colonel, 
which that day, owing to the illness of General 
Young, had placed him in command of a brigade, 
was still a doctor. But discipline was strong in 
him, and though he looked many things, he rose 
from his knees and grimly saluted. But at that 
moment, without waiting for the permission of 
any one, the men leaped out of the trench and ran. 
It looked as though they were going to run all the 
way to the sea, and the sight was sickening. But 
they had no intention of running to the sea. They 

126 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

ran only to the trench forty feet farther down and 
jumped into it, and instantly turning, began pump- 
ing kad at the enemy. Since five that morning 
Wood had been running about on his feet, his 
clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and 
water of forded streams, and as he rose he Hmped 
shghtly. "My, but Fm tired!" he said, in a 
tone of the most acute surprise, and as though that 
fact was the only one that was weighing on his 
mind. He limped over to the trench in which the 
men were now busily firing off their rifles and 
waved a riding-crop he carried at the trench they 
had abandoned. He was standing as Crane had 
been standing, in silhouette against the sky-line. 
**Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. 
"The other men can't withdraw, and so you 
mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out of 
that!" What made it more amusing was that, 
although Wood had, like every one else, discarded 
his coat and wore a strange uniform of gray shirt, 
white riding-breeches, and a cowboy Stetson, with 
no insignia of rank, not even straps pinned to his 
shirt, still the men instantly accepted his authority. 
They looked at him on the crest of the hill, waving 
his stick persuasively at the grave-like trench at 
his feet, and then with a shout scampered back 
to it. 

127 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica 
and no place to sleep and nothing to eat, I accepted 
Crane's offer of a blanket and coffee at his bivouac 
near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was 
not able to walk fast, and, although for over a 
mile of the way the trail was under fire, Crane and 
Hare each insisted on giving me an arm, and kept 
step with my stumblings. Whenever I protested 
and refused their sacrifice and pointed out the 
risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings 
of a naughty child, and when I lay down in the road 
and refused to budge unless they left me, Crane 
called the attention of Hare to the effect of the 
setting sun behind the palm-trees. To the reader 
all these little things that one remembers seem 
very little indeed, but they were vivid at the mo- 
ment, and I have always thought of them as 
stretching over a long extent of time and terri- 
tory Before I revisited San Juan I would have 
said that the distance along the road from the 
point where I left the artillery to where I joined 
Wood was three-quarters of a mile. When I 
paced it later I found the distance was about 
seventy-five yards. I do not urge my stupidity 
or my extreme terror as a proof that others 
would be as greatly confused, but, if only for the 
sake of the stupid ones, it seems a pity that the 

128 




Rough Riders in the trenches 




The same spot as it appears to-day 

The figure in the picture is standing in what remains of the trench 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued 
from the jungle, and a few sign-posts placed upon 
the hills. It is true that the great battles of 
the Civil War and those of the one in Man- 
churia, where the men killed and wounded in a 
day outnumber all those who fought on both 
sides at San Juan, make that battle read like a 
skirmish. But the Spanish War had its results. 
At least it made Cuba into a republic, and so en- 
riched or burdened us with colonies that our re- 
pubHc changed into something like an empire. 
But I do not urge that. It will never be because 
San Juan changed our foreign policy that people 
will visit the spot, and will send from it picture 
postal cards. The human interest alone will keep 
San Juan alive. The men who fought there 
came from every State in our country and from 
every class of our social life. We sent there the 
best of our regular army, and with them, cowboys, 
clerks, bricklayers, foot-ball players, three future 
commanders of the greater army that followed 
that war, the future Governor of Cuba, future 
commanders of the Philippines, the commander of 
our forces in China, a future President of the 
United States. And, whether these men, when 
they returned to their homes again, became clerks 
and millionaires and dentists, or rose to be presi- 

129 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

dents and mounted policemen, they all remember 
very kindly the days they lay huddled together in 
the trenches on that hot and glaring sky-line. 
And there must be many more besides who hold 
the place in memory. There are few in the 
United States so poor in relatives and friends who 
did not in his or her heart send a substitute to 
Cuba. For these it seems as though San Juan 
might be better preserved, not as it is, for already 
its aspect is too far changed to wish for that, but 
as it was. The efforts already made to keep the 
place in memory and to honor the Americans 
who died there are the public park which I have 
mentioned, the monument on San Juan, and one 
other monument at Guasimas to the regulars and 
Rough Riders who were killed there. To these 
monuments the Society of Santiago will add four 
more, which will mark the landing place of the 
army at Daiquairi and the fights at Guasimas, 
El Caney, and San Juan Hill. 

But I believe even more than this might be done 
to preserve to the place its proper values. These 
values are sentimental, historical, and possibly to 
the military student, educational. If to-day there 
were erected at Daiquairi, Siboney, Guasimas, El 
Poso, El Caney, and on and about San Juan a 
dozen iron or bronze tablets that would tell from 

130 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

where certain regiments advanced, what posts they 
held, how many or how few were the men who 
held those positions, how near they were to the 
trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men 
were commanded, I am sure the place would re- 
construct itself and would breathe with interest, 
not only for the returning volunteer, but for any 
casual tourist. As it is, the history of the fight 
and the reputation of the men who fought is now 
at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the 
Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The care- 
taker speaks only Spanish, and, considering the 
amount of misinformation the guides disseminate, 
it is a pity when they are talking to Americans, 
they are not forced to use the same language. 
When last I visited it, Carlos Portuondo was the 
official guardian of San Juan Hill. He is an aged 
Cuban, and he fought through the Ten Years' 
War, but during the last insurrection and the 
Spanish-American War he not only was not near 
San Juan, but was not even on the Island of 
Cuba. He is a charming old person, and so is 
his aged wife. Their chief concern in life, when 
I saw them, was to sell me a pair of breeches 
made of palm-fibre which Carlos had worn 
throughout the entire ten years of battle. The 
vicissitudes of those trousers he recited to me 

131 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

in great detail, and he very properly regarded 
them as of historic value. But of what happened 
at San Juan he knew nothing, and when I asked 
him why he held his present post and occupied 
the Block-House, he said, "To keep the cows 
out of the park." When I asked him where the 
Americans had camped, he pointed carefully from 
the back door of the Block-House to the foot 
of his kitchen-garden. I assured him that under 
no stress of terror could the entire American 
army have been driven into his back yard, and 
pointed out where it had stretched along the 
ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but un- 
mistakably showed that he thought I was a liar. 
From the Venus Hotel there were two guides, old 
Casanova and Jean Casanova, his languid and 
good-natured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old 
Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to 
give much credit for what they did in Cuba to the 
Americans. After all, he says, they came only 
just as the Cubans themselves were about to con- 
quer the Spaniards, and by a lucky chance re- 
ceived the surrender and then claimed all the 
credit. As other Cubans told me, "Had the 
Americans left us alone a few weeks longer, we 
would have ended the war." How they were to 
have taken Havana, and sunk Cervera's fleet, 

132 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

and why they were not among those present when 
our men charged San Juan, I did not inquire. 
Old Casanova, again like other Cubans, ranks 
the fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher 
than those of the American. This is only human. 
It must be annoying to a Cuban to remember that 
after he had for three years fought the Spaniard, 
the Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender 
and began to ship him home. The way Casanova 
describes the fight at El Caney is as follows: 

"The Americans thought they could capture 
El Caney in one day, but the brave General Toral 
fought so good that it was six days before the 
Americans could make the Spaniards surrender." 
The statement is correct except as regards the 
length of time during which the fight lasted. The 
Americans did make the mistake of thinking they 
could eat up El Caney in an hour and then march 
through it to San Juan. Owing to the splendid 
courage of Toral and his few troops our soldiers, 
under two of our best generals, were held in check 
from seven in the morning until two in the after- 
noon. But the difference between seven hours 
of one day and six days is considerable. Still, at 
present at San Juan that is the sort of information 
upon which the patriotic and puzzled American 
tourist is fed. 

133 



The Passing of San Juan Hill 

Young Casanova, the only other authority in 
Santiago, is not so sure of his facts as is his father, 
and is willing to learn. He went with me to hold 
my pony while I took the photographs that ac- 
company this article, and I listened with great in- 
terest to his accounts of the battle. Finally he 
made a statement that was correct. '*How did 
you happen to get that right?" I asked. 

"Yesterday," he said, "I guided Colonel Hayes 
here, and while I guided him he explained it to 
me. 



134 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 



WITH BULLER'S COLUMN 

WERE you the station-master here before 
this?" I asked the man in the straw hat, 
at Colenso. "I mean before this war?" 

"No fear!" snorted the station-master, scorn- 
fully. "Why, we didn't know Colenso was on the 
line until Buller fought a battle here. That's 
how it is with all these way-stations now. Every- 
body's talking about them. We never took no 
notice to them." 

And yet the arriving stranger might have 
been forgiven his point of view and his start of 
surprise when he found Chieveley a place of 
only a half dozen corrugated zinc huts, and Co- 
lenso a scattered gathering of a dozen shattered 
houses of battered brick. 

Chieveley seemed so insignificant in contrast 
with its fame to those who had followed the 
war on maps and in the newspapers, that one 
was not sure he was on the right road until he 
saw from the car-window the armored train still 
lying on the embankment, the graves beside it, 
and the donga into which Winston Churchill 
pulled and carried the wounded. 

137 



With Buller's Column 

And as the train bumped and halted before 
the blue and white enamel sign that marks Co- 
lenso station, the places which have made that 
spot familiar and momentous fell into line like 
the buoys which mark the entrance to a harbor. 

We knew that the high bare ridge to the right 
must be Fort Wylie, that the plain on the left 
was where Colonel Long had lost his artillery, and 
three officers gained the Victoria Cross, and that 
the swift, muddy stream, in which the iron rail- 
road bridge lay humped and sprawling, was the 
Tugela River. 

Six hours before, at Frere Station, the station- 
master had awakened us to say that Ladysmith 
would be relieved at any moment. This had 
but just come over the wire. It was "official." 
Indeed, he added, with local pride, that the vil- 
lage band was still awake and in readiness to 
celebrate the imminent event. He found, I fear, 
an unsympathetic audience. The train was car- 
rying philanthropic gentlemen in charge of stores 
of champagne and marmalade for the besieged 
city. They did not want it to be relieved until 
they were there to substitute pate de foie gras for 
horseflesh. And there were officers, too, who 
wanted a "look in," and who had been kept 
waiting at Cape Town for commissions, glad- 

138 



With Buller's Column 

dening the guests of the Mount Nelson Hotel the 
while with their new khaki and gaiters, and there 
were Tommies who wanted " Relief of Ladysmith" 
on the claps of their medals, as they had seen 
"Relief of Lucknow'' on the medals of the Chel- 
sea pensioners. And there was a correspondent 
who had journeyed 15,000 mibs to see Lady- 
smith relieved, and who was apparently going 
to miss that sight, after five weeks of travel, by 
a margin of five hours. 

We all growled ** That's good," as we had 
done for the last two weeks every time we had 
heard it was relieved, but our tone was not en- 
thusiastic. And when the captain of the Natal 
Carbineers said, "I am afraid the good news is 
too premature," we all said, hopefully, we were 
afraid it was. 

We had seen nothing yet that was like real 
war. That night at Pietermaritzburg the offi- 
cers at the hotel were in mess-jackets, the offi- 
cers' wives in dinner-gowns. It was like Shep- 
heard's Hotel, at the top of the season. But 
only six hours after that dinner, as we looked 
out of the car-windows, we saw galloping across 
the high grass, like men who had lost their way, 
and silhouetted black against the red sunrise, 
countless horsemen scouting ahead of our train, 

139 



With BuUer's Column 

and guarding it against the fate of the armored 
one lying wrecked at Chieveley. The darkness 
was still heavy on the land and the only lights 
were the red eyes of the armored train creep- 
ing in advance of ours, and the red sun, which 
showed our silent escort appearing suddenly 
against the sky-line on a ridge, or galloping 
toward us through the dew to order us, with a 
wave of the hand, to greater speed. One hour 
after sunrise the train drew up at Colenso, and 
from only a mile away we heard the heavy thud 
of the naval guns, the hammering of the Boer 
"pom-poms," and the Maxims and Colt auto- 
matics spanking the air. We smiled at each 
other guiltily. We were on time. It was most 
evident that Ladysmith had not been relieved. 

This was the twelfth day of a battle that Bul- 
ler's column was waging against the Boers and 
their mountain ranges, or *' disarranges," as 
some one described them, without having gained 
more than three miles of hostile territory. He 
had tried to force his way through them six 
times, and had been repulsed six times. And 
now he was to try it again. 

No map, nor photograph, nor written de- 
scription can give an idea of the country which 
lay between Buller and his goal. It was an 

140 



With BuUer's Column 

eruption of high hills, Hnked together at every 
point without order or sequence. In most coun- 
tries mountains and hills follow some natural 
law. The Cordilleras can be traced from the 
Amazon River to Guatemala City; they make 
the water-shed of two continents; the Great 
Divide forms the backbone of the States, but these 
Natal hills have no lineal descent. They are 
illegitimate children of no line, abandoned broad- 
cast over the country, with no family likeness and 
no home. They stand alone, or shoulder to 
shoulder, or at right angles, or at a tangent, or 
join hands across a valley. They never appear 
the same; some run to a sharp point, some stretch 
out, forming a table-land, others are gigantic ant- 
hills, others perfect and accurately modelled ram- 
parts. In a ride of half a mile, every hill com- 
pletely loses its original aspect and character. 

They hide each other, or disguise each other. 
Each can be enfiladed by the other, and not one 
gives up the secret of its strategic value until its 
crest has been carried by the bayonet. To add 
to this confusion, the river Tugela has selected the 
hills around Ladysmith as occupying the country 
through which it will endeavor to throw off its 
pursuers. It darts through them as though striv- 
ing to escape, it doubles on its tracks, it sinks out 

141 



With Buller's Column 

of sight between them, and in the open plain 
rises to the dignity of water-falls. It runs uphill, 
and remains motionless on an incline, and on the 
level ground twists and turns so frequently that 
when one says he has crossed the Tugela, he 
means he has crossed it once at a drift, once at 
the wrecked railroad bridge, and once over a 
pontoon. And then he is not sure that he is not 
still on the same side from which he started. 

Some of these hills are green, but the greater 
part are a yellow or dark red, against which 
at two hundred yards a man in khaki is indis- 
tinguishable from the rocks around him. In- 
deed, the khaki is the EngHsh soldier's sole 
protection. It saves him in spite of himself, for 
he apparently cannot learn to advance under 
cover, and a sky-line is the one place where he 
selects to stand erect and stretch his weary limbs. 
I have come to within a hundred yards of a hill 
before I saw that scattered among its red and 
yellow bowlders was the better part of a regiment 
as closely packed together as the crowd on the 
bleaching boards at a base-ball match. 

Into this maze and confusion of nature's 
fortifications Buller's column has been twist- 
ing and turning, marching and countermarch- 
ing, capturing one position after another, to find 

142 



With Buller's Column 

It was enfiladed from many hills, and abandon- 
ing it, only to retake it a week later. The greater 
part of the column has abandoned its tents and 
is bivouacking in the open. It is a wonderful 
and impressive sight. At the first view, an army 
in being, when it is spread out as it is in the Tu- 
gela basin back of the hills, seems a hopelessly and 
irrevocably entangled mob. 

An army in the field is not regiments of armed 
men, marching with a gun on shoulder, or crouch- 
ing behind trenches. That is the least, even if it 
seems the most, important part of it. Before one 
reaches the firing-line he must pass villages of 
men, camps of men, bivouacs of men, who are 
feeding, mending, repairing, and jurying the 
men at the ** front." It is these latter that make 
the mob of gypsies, which is apparently without 
head or order or organization. They stretched 
across the great basin of the Tugela, like the 
children of Israel, their camp-fires rising to the 
sky at night like the reflection of great search- 
lights; by day they swarmed across the plain, 
like hundreds of moving circus-vans in every 
direction, with as little obvious intention as herds 
of buff^alo. But each had his appointed work, 
and each was utterly indifferent to the battle 
going forward a mile away. Hundreds of teams, 

143 



With BuUer s Column 

of sixteen oxen each, crawled like great black 
water-snakes across the drifts, the Kaffir driv- 
ers, naked and black, lashing them with whips 
as long as lariats, shrieking, beseeching, and 
howling, and falling upon the oxen's horns to 
drag them into place. 

Mules from Spain and Texas, loaded with 
ammunition, kicked and plunged, more oxen 
drew more soberly the great naval guns, which 
lurched as though in a heavy sea, throwing the 
blue-jackets who hung upon the drag-ropes from 
one high side of the trail to the other. Across 
the plain, and making toward the trail, wagons 
loaded with fodder, with rations, with camp 
equipment, with tents and cooking-stoves, crowded 
each other as closely as cable-cars on Broadway. 
Scattered among them were fixed lines of tethered 
horses, rows of dog-tents, camps of Kaffirs, hos- 
pital stations with the Red Cross waving from 
the nearest and highest tree. Dripping water- 
carts with as many spigots as the regiment had 
companies, howitzer guns guided by as many 
ropes as a May-pole, crowded past these to the 
trail, or gave way to the ambulances filled with 
men half dressed and bound in the zinc-blue 
bandages that made the color detestable for- 
ever after. Troops of the irregular horse gallop 

144 



With Buller's Column 

through this multitude, with a jangling of spurs 
and sHng-belts; and Tommies, in close order, 
fight their way among the oxen, or help pull them 
to one side as the stretchers pass, each with its 
burden, each with its blue bandage stained a 
dark brownish crimson. It is only when the 
figure on the stretcher lies under a blanket that 
the tumult and push and sweltering mass comes 
to a quick pause, while the dead man's com- 
rade stands at attention, and the officer raises 
his fingers to his helmet. Then the mass surges 
on again, with cracking of whips and shouts and 
imprecations, while the yellow dust rises in thick 
clouds and buries the picture in a glaring fog. 
This moving, struggling mass, that fights for 
the right of way along the road, is within easy 
distance of the shells. Those from their own 
guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo, those 
from the enemy burst among them at rare inter- 
vals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a 
dozen Tommies rush to dig them out as keep- 
sakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regi- 
ments are lying crouched behind brown and 
yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, 
the hills are sown with them. With a glass you 
can distinguish them against the sky-line of every 
hill, for over three miles away. Sometimes the 

145 



With BuUer's Column 

men rise and fire, and there is a feverish flutter 
of musketry; sometimes they lie motionless for 
hours while the guns make the ways straight. 

Any one who has seen Epsom Downs on a 
Derby day, with its thousands of vans and tents 
and lines of horses and moving mobs, can form 
some idea of what it is like. But while at the 
Derby all is interest and excitement, and every 
one is pushing and struggling, and the air pal- 
pitates with the intoxication of a great event, 
the winning of a horse-race — here, where men 
are killed every hour and no one of them knows 
when his turn may come, the fact that most 
impresses you is their indifference to it all. What 
strikes you most is the bored air of the Tommies, 
the undivided interest of the engineers in the con- 
struction of a pontoon bridge, the solicitude of the 
medical staff over the long lines of wounded, the 
rage of the naked Kaffirs at their lumbering 
steers; the fact that every one is intent on some- 
thing — anything — but the battle. 

They are wearied with battles. The Tommies 
stretch themselves in the sun to dry the wet khaki 
in which they have lain out in the cold night for 
weeks, and yawn at battles. Or, if you climb to 
the hill where the officers are seated, you will find 
men steeped even deeper in boredom. They are 

146 



With Buller's Column 

burned a dark red; their brown mustaches look 
white by contrast; theirs are the same faces you 
have met with in Piccadilly, which you see across 
the tables of the Savoy restaurant, which gaze de- 
pressedly from the windows of White's and the 
Bachelors' Club. If they were bored then, they 
are unbearably bored now. Below them the 
men of their regiment lie crouched amid the 
bowlders, hardly distinguishable from the brown 
and yellow rock. They are sleeping, or dozing, 
or yawning. A shell passes over them like the 
shaking of many telegraph w4res, and neither 
officer nor Tommy raises his head to watch it 
strike. They are tired in body and in mind, 
with cramped limbs and aching eyes. They 
have had twelve nights and twelve days of bat- 
tle, and it has lost its power to amuse. 

When the sergeants call the companies together, 
they are eager enough. Anything is better than 
lying still looking up at the sunny, inscrutable 
hills, or down into the plain crawling with black 
oxen. 

Among the group of staff officers some one has 
lost a cigar-holder. It has sHpped from be- 
tween his fingers, and, with the vindictiveness 
of inanimate things, has slid and jumped under 
a pile of rocks. The interest of all around is 

147 



With BuUer's Column 

instantly centred on the lost cigar-holder. The 
Tommies begin to roll the rocks away, endanger- 
ing the limbs of the men below them, and half 
the kopje is obliterated. They are as keen as 
terriers after a rat. The officers sit above and 
give advice and disagree as to where that cigar- 
holder hid itself. Over their heads, not twenty 
feet above, the shells chase each other fiercely. 
But the officers have become accustomed to 
shells; a search for a lost cigar-holder, which 
is going on under their very eyes, is of greater in- 
terest. And when at last a Tommy pounces upon 
it with a laugh of triumph, the officers look their 
disappointment, and, with a sigh of resignation, 
pick up their field-glasses. 

It is all a question of familiarity. On Broad- 
way, if a building is going up where there is a 
chance of a loose brick falling on some one's 
head, the contractor puts up red signs marked 
"Danger!" and you dodge over to the other 
side. But if you had been in battle for twelve 
days, as have the soldiers of Buller's column, 
passing shells would interest you no more than 
do passing cable-cars. After twelve days you 
would forget that shells are dangerous even as 
you forget when crossing Broadway that cable- 
cars can kill and mangle. 

148 



With Buller's Column 

Up on the highest hill, seated among the 
highest rocks, are General Duller and his staff. 
The hill is all of rocks, sharp, brown rocks, 
as clearly cut as foundation-stones. They are 
thrown about at irregular angles, and are shaded 
only by stiff bayonet-like cacti. Above is a blue 
glaring sky, into which the top of the kopje seems 
to reach, and to draw and concentrate upon itself 
all of the sun's heat. This Httle jagged point of 
blistering rocks holds the forces that press the 
button which sets the struggling mass below, and 
the thousands of men upon the surrounding hills, 
in motion. It is the conning tower of the relief 
column, only, unlike a conning tower, it offers no 
protection, no seclusion, no peace. To-day, com- 
manding generals, under the new conditions 
which this war has developed, do not charge up 
hills waving flashing swords. They sit on rocks, 
and wink out their orders by a flashing hand-mir- 
ror. The swords have been left at the base, or 
coated deep with mud, so that they shall not 
flash, and with this column every one, under the 
rank of general, carries a rifle on purpose to 
disguise the fact that he is entitled to carry a 
sword. The kopje is the central station of the 
system. From its uncomfortable eminence the 
commanding general watches the developments 

149 



With Buller's Column 

of his attack, and directs it by heliograph and 
ragged bits of bunting. A sweating, dirty Tom- 
my turns his back on a hill a mile away and 
slaps the air with his signal flag; another Tom- 
my, with the front visor of his helmet cocked 
over the back of his neck, watches an answer- 
ing bit of bunting through a glass. The bit of 
bunting, a mile away, flashes impatiently, once 
to the right and once to the left, and the Tommy 
with the glass says, "They understand, sir," 
and the other Tommy, who has not as yet cast 
even an interested glance at the regiment he has 
ordered into action, folds his flag and curls up 
against a hot rock and instantly sleeps. 

Stuck on the crest, twenty feet from where 
General BuUer is seated, are two iron rods, like 
those in the putting-green of a golf course. They 
mark the line of direction which a shell must 
take, in order to seek out the enemy. Back of 
the kopje, where they cannot see the enemy, 
where they cannot even see the hill upon which 
he is intrenched, are the howitzers. Their duty 
is to aim at the iron rods, and vary their aim to 
either side of them as they are directed to do by 
an officer on the crest. Their shells pass a few 
yards over the heads of the staffs, but the staffs 
has confidence. Those three yards are as safe a 

150 



With Buller's Column 

margin as a hundred. Their confidence is that 
of the lady in spangles at a music-hall, who per- 
mits her husband in buckskin to shoot apples 
from the top of her head. From the other direc- 
tion come the shells of the Boers, seeking out the 
hidden howitzers. They pass somewhat higher, 
crashing into the base of the kopje, sometimes 
killing, sometimes digging their own ignominious 
graves. The staff regard them with the same in- 
difference. One of them tears the overcoat upon 
which Colonel Stuart-Wortley is seated, another 
destroys his diary. His men, lying at his feet 
among the red rocks, observe this with wide 
eyes. But he does not shift his position. His 
answer is, that his men cannot shift theirs. 

On Friday, February 23d, the Inniskillings, 
Dublins, and Connaughts were sent out to take 
a trench, half-way up Railway Hill. The at- 
tack was one of those frontal attacks, which in 
this war, against the new weapons, have added 
so much to the lists of killed and wounded and 
to the prestige of the men, while it has, in an 
inverse ratio, hurt the prestige of the men by 
whom the attack was ordered. The result of 
this attack was peculiarly disastrous. It was 
made at night, and as soon as it developed, the 
Boers retreated to the trenches on the crest of the 

151 



With Bullet's Column 

hill, and threw men around the sides to bring 
a cross-fire to bear on the Englishmen. In the 
morning the Inniskillings found they had lost 
four hundred men, and ten out of their fifteen 
ofl&cers. The other regiments lost as heavily. 
The following Tuesday, which was the anni- 
versary of Majuba Hill, three brigades, instead 
of a regiment, were told off to take this same Rail- 
way Hill, or Pieter's, as it was later called, on the 
flank, and with it to capture two others. On the 
same day, nineteen years before, the English had 
lost Majuba Hill, and their hope was to take these 
three from the Boers for the one they had lost, 
and open the way to Bulwana Mountain, which 
was the last bar that held them back from Lady- 
smith. 

The first two of the three hills they wanted 
were shoulder to shoulder, the third was sepa- 
rated from them by a deep ravine. This last 
was the highest, and in order that the attack 
should be successful, it was necessary to seize 
it first. The hills stretched for three miles; 
they were about one thousand two hundred 
yards high. 

For three hours a single line of men slipped 
and stumbled forward along the muddy bank 
of the river, and for three hours the artillery 

152 



With BuUer's Column 

crashed, spluttered, and stabbed at the three 
hills above them, scattering the rocks and burst- 
ing over and behind the Boer trenches on the 
crest. 

As is their custom, the Boers remained in- 
visible and made no reply. And though we 
knew they were there, it seemed inconceivable 
that anything human could live under such a 
bombardment of shot, bullets, and shrapnel. 
A hundred yards distant, on our right, the navy 
guns were firing lyddite that burst with a thick 
yellow smoke; on the other side Colt automat- 
ics were put-put-put-ing a stream of bullets; 
the field-guns and the howitzers were playing 
from a hill half a mile behind us, and scattered 
among the rocks about us, and for two miles on 
either hand, the infantry in reserve were firing 
off ammunition at any part of the three hills 
they happened to dislike! 

The roar of the navy's Four-Point-Sevens, 
their crash, their rush as they passed, the shrill 
whine of the shrapnel, the barking of the hov^t- 
zers, and the mechanical, regular rattle of the 
quick-firing Maxims, which sounded like the 
clicking of many mowing-machines on a hot 
summer's day, tore the air with such hideous 
noises that one's skull ached from the concus- 

153 



With Buller's Column 

sion, and one could only be heard by shouting. 
But more impressive by far than this hot chorus 
of mighty thunder and petty hammering, was 
the roar of the wind which was driven down 
into the valley beneath, and which swept up 
again in enormous waves of sound. It roared 
like a wild hurricane at sea. The illusion was 
so complete, that you expected, by looking down, 
to see the Tugela lashing at her banks, tossing 
the spray hundreds of feet in air, and batthng 
with her sides of rock. It was like the roar of 
Niagara in a gale, and yet when you did look below, 
not a leaf was stirring, and the Tugela was slip- 
ping forward, flat and sluggish, and in peace. 

The long procession of yellow figures was 
still advancing along the bottom of the valley, 
toward the right, when on the crest of the farther- 
most hill fourteen of them appeared suddenly, 
and ran forward and sprang into the trenches. 

Perched against the blue sky on the highest 
and most distant of the three hills, they looked 
terribly lonely and insufficient, and they ran 
about, this way and that, as though they were 
very much surprised to find themselves where 
they were. Then they settled down into the 
Boer trench, from our side of it, and began 
firing, their officer, as his habit is, standing up 

154 



With Buller's Column 

behind them. The hill they had taken had 
evidently been abandoned to them by the ene- 
my, and the fourteen men in khaki had taken it 
by "default." But they disappeared so suddenly 
into the trench, that we knew they were not en- 
joying their new position in peace, and every one 
looked below them, to see the arriving reinforce- 
ments. They came at last, to the number of ten, 
and scampered about just as the others had done, 
looking for cover. It seemed as if we could almost 
hear the singing of the bullet when one of them 
dodged, and it was with a distinct sense of re- 
lief, and of freedom from further responsibil- 
ity, that we saw the ten disappear also, and be- 
come part of the yellow stones about them. 
Then a very wonderful movement began to 
agitate the men upon the two remaining hills 
They began to creep up them as you have seen 
seaweed rise with the tide and envelop a rock. 
They moved in regiments, but each man was as 
distinct as is a letter of the alphabet in each 
word on this page, black with letters. We be- 
gan to follow the fortunes of individual letters. 
It was a most selfish and cowardly occupation, 
for you knew you were in no greater danger than 
you would be in looking through the glasses of a 
mutoscope. The battle unrolled before you like 

155 



With Buller's Column 

a panorama. The guns on our side of the valley 
had ceased, the hurricane in the depths below 
had instantly spent itself, and the birds and in- 
sects had again begun to fill our hill with drowsy 
twitter and song. But on the other, half the 
men were wrapping the base of the hill in khaki, 
which rose higher and higher, growing looser 
and less tightly wrapt as it spun upward. Half- 
way to the crest there was a broad open space 
of green grass, and above that a yellow bank of 
earth, which supported the track of the railroad. 
This green space spurted with tiny geysers of 
yellow dust. Where the bullets came from or 
who sent them we could not see. But the loose 
ends of the bandage of khaki were stretching 
across this green space and the yellow spurts of 
dust rose all around them. The men crossed 
this fire zone warily, looking to one side or the 
other, as the bullets struck the earth heavily, like 
drops of rain before a shower. 

The men had their heads and shoulders bent 
as though they thought a roof was about to 
fall on them; some ran from rock to rock, seek- 
ing cover properly; others scampered toward the 
safe vantage-ground behind the railroad embank- 
ment; others advanced leisurely, like men play- 
ing golf. The silence, after the hurricane of 

156 



With BuUer's Column 

sounds, was painful; we could not hear even the 
Boer rifles. The men moved like figures in a 
dream, without firing a shot. They seemed each 
to be acting on his own account, without unison 
or organization. As I have said, you ceased con- 
sidering the scattered whole, and became intent 
on the adventures of individuals. These fell so 
suddenly, that you waited with great anxiety to 
learn whether they had dropped to dodge a 
bullet or whether one had found them. The 
men came at last from every side, and from out 
of every ridge and dried-up waterway. Open 
spaces which had been green a moment before 
were suddenly dyed yellow with them. Where 
a company had been clinging to the railroad em- 
bankment, there stood one regiment holding it, 
and another sweeping over it. Heights that had 
seemed the goal, became the resting-place of the 
stretcher-bearers, until at last no part of the hill 
remained unpopulated, save a high bulging ram- 
part of unprotected and open ground. And then, 
suddenly, coming from the earth itself, appar- 
ently, one man ran across this open space and 
leaped on top of the trench which crowned the 
hill. He was fully fifteen yards in advance of all 
the rest, entirely unsupported, and alone. And 
he had evidently planned it so, for he took off his 

157 



With Buller's Column 

helmet and waved it, and stuck it on his rifle 
and waved it again, and then suddenly clapped 
it on his head and threw his gun to his shoul- 
der. He stood so, pointing down into the trench, 
and it seemed as though we could hear him calling 
upon the Boers behind it to surrender. 

A few minutes later the last of the three hills 
was mounted by the West Yorks, who were mis- 
taken by their own artillery for Boers, and fired 
upon both by the Boers and by their own shrapnel 
and lyddite. Four men were wounded, and, to 
save themselves, a line of them stood up at full 
length on the trench and cheered and waved at the 
artillery until it had ceased to play upon them. 
The Boers continued to fire upon them with 
rifles for over two hours. But it was only a 
demonstration to cover the retreat of the greater 
number, and at daybreak the hills were in com- 
plete and peaceful possession of the English. 
These hills were a part of the same Railway Hill 
which four nights before the Inniskillings and 
a composite regiment had attempted to take 
by a frontal attack, with the loss of six hundred 
men, among whom were three colonels. By 
this flank attack, and by using nine regiments 
instead of one, the same hills and two others were 
taken with two hundred casualties. The fact 

158 



With Buller's Column 

that this battle, which was called the Battle of 
Pieter's Hill, and the surrender of General Cronje 
and his forces to Lord Roberts, both took place 
on the anniversary of the battle of Majuba Hill, 
made the whole of Buller's column feel that the 
ill memory of that disaster had been effaced. 



159 



II 

THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH 

AFTER the defeat of the Boers at the battle 
. of Pieter's Hill there were two things left 
for them to do. They could fall back across a 
great plain which stretched from Pieter's Hill 
to Bulwana Mountain, and there make their last 
stand against Duller and the Ladysmith relief col- 
umn, or they could abandon the siege of Lady- 
smith and slip away after having held BuUer at 
bay for three months. 

Bulwana Mountain is shaped like a brick 
and blocks the valley in which Ladysmith lies. 
The railroad track slips around one end of the 
brick, and the Dundee trail around the other. 
It was on this mountain that the Boers had placed 
their famous gun. Long Tom, with which they 
began the bombardment of Ladysmith, and with 
which up to the day before Ladysmith was re- 
lieved they had thrown three thousand shells 
into that miserable town. 

If the Boers on retreating from Pieter's Hill 
had fortified this mountain with the purpose of 
holding off BuUer for a still longer time, they 

i6o 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

would have been under a fire from General 
White's artillery in the town behind them and 
from Buller's naval guns in front. Their position 
would not have been unlike that of Humpty 
Dumpty on the wall, so they wisely adopted the 
only alternative and slipped away. This was on 
Tuesday night, while the British were hurrying 
up artillery to hold the hills they had taken that 
afternoon. 

By ten o'clock the following morning from 
the top of Pieter's Hill you could still see the 
Boers moving off along the Dundee road. It 
was an easy matter to follow them, for the dust 
hung above the trail in a yellow cloud, like mist 
over a swamp. There were two opinions as to 
whether they were halting at Bulwana or passing 
it, on their way to Laing's Neck. If they were 
going only to Bulwana there was the probability 
of two weeks' more fighting before they could be 
dislodged. If they had avoided Bulwana, the 
way to Ladysmith was open. 

Lord Dundonald, who is in command of a 
brigade of irregular cavalry, was scouting to 
the left of Bulwana, far in advance of our forces. 
At sunset he arrived, without having encountered 
the Boers, at the base of Bulwana. He could 
either return and report the disappearance of the 

i6i 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

enemy or he could make a dash for it and enter 
Ladysmith. His orders were **to go, look, see," 
and avoid an action, and the fact that none of his 
brigade was in the triumphant procession which 
took place three days later has led many to think 
that in entering the besieged town without orders 
he offended the commanding general. In any 
event, it is a family row and of no interest to 
the outsider. The main fact is that he did make 
a dash for it, and just at sunset found himself 
with two hundred men only a mile from the 
** Doomed City." His force was composed of 
Natal Carbiniers and Imperial Light Horse. 
He halted them, and in order that honors might 
be even, formed them in sections with the half 
sections made up from each of the two organ- 
izations. All the officers were placed in front, 
and with a cheer they started to race across the 
plain. 

The wig-waggers on Convent Hill had already 
seen them, and the townspeople and the garrison 
were rushing through the streets to meet them, 
cheering and shouting, and some of them weep- 
ing. Others, so officers tell me, who were in the 
different camps, looked down upon the figures 
galloping across the plain in the twilight, and 
continued making tea. 

162 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

Just as they had reached the centre of the 
town, General Sir George White and his staff 
rode down from head-quarters and met the men 
whose coming meant for him life and peace and 
success. They were advancing at a walk, with 
the cheering people hanging to their stirrups, 
clutching at their hands and hanging to the 
bridles of their horses. 

General White's first greeting was character- 
istically unselfish and loyal, and typical of the 
British officer. He gave no sign of his own in- 
calculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the 
things which were Caesar's. He did not cheer 
Dundonald, nor Duller, nor the column which 
had rescued him and his garrison from present 
starvation and probable imprisonment at Pre- 
toria. He raised his helmet and cried, "We 
will give three cheers for the Queen!" And 
then the general and the healthy, ragged, and 
sunburned troopers from the outside world, the 
starved, fever-ridden garrison, and the starved, 
fever-ridden civilians stood with hats off and 
sang their national anthem. 

The column outside had been fighting stead- 
ily for six weeks to get Dundonald or any one 
of its force into Ladysmith; for fourteen days 
it had been living in the open, fighting by night 

163 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

as well as by day, without halt or respite; the 
garrison inside had been for four months hold- 
ing the enemy at bay with the point of the bay- 
onet; it was famished for food, it was rotten with 
fever, and yet when the relief came and all turned 
out well, the first thought of every one was for the 
Queen! 

It may be credulous in them or old-fashioned, 
but it is certainly very unselfish, and when you 
take their point of view it is certainly very fine. 

After the Queen every one else had his share 
of the cheering, and General White could not com- 
plain of the heartiness with which they greeted 
him. He tried to make a speech in reply, but it 
was a brief one. He spoke of how much they 
owed to General Duller and his column, and he 
congratulated his own soldiers on the defence 
they had made. 

"I am very sorry, men," he said, "that I had 
to cut down your rations. I — I promise you 
I won't do it again." 

Then he stopped very suddenly and whirled 
his horse's head around and rode away. Judg- 
ing from the number of times they told me of 
this, the fact that they had all but seen an Eng- 
lish general give way to his feelings seemed to 
have impressed the civilian mind of Ladysmith 

164 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

more than the entrance of the relief force. The 
men having come in and demonstrated that the 
way was open, rode forth again, and the reHef 
of Ladysmith had taken place. But it is not 
the people cheering in the dark streets, nor 
General White breaking down in his speech of 
welcome, which gives the note to the way the 
men of Ladysmith received their freedom. It 
is rather the fact that as the two hundred bat- 
tle-stained and earth-stained troopers galloped 
forward, racing to be the first, and rising in their 
stirrups to cheer, the men in the hospital camps 
said, "Well, they're come at last, have they?" 
and continued fussing over their fourth of a ra- 
tion of tea. That gives the real picture of how 
Ladysmith came into her inheritance, and of how 
she received her rescuers. 

On the morning after Dundonald had ridden 
in and out of Ladysmith, two other correspond- 
ents and myself started to relieve it on our own 
account. We did not know the way to Lady- 
smith, and we did not then know whether or not 
the Boers still occupied Bulwana Mountain. But 
we argued that the chances of the Boers having 
raised the siege were so good that it was worth 
risking their not having done so, and being taken 
prisoner. 

i6s 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

We carried all the tobacco we could pack in 
our saddle-bags, and enough food for one day. 
My chief regret was that my government, with 
true republican simplicity, had given me a pass- 
port, type-written on a modest sheet of note- 
paper and wofully lacking in impressive seals 
and coats of arms. I fancied it would look to 
Boer eyes like one I might have forged for my- 
self in the writing-room of the hotel at Cape 
Town. 

We had ridden up Pieter's Hill and scrambled 
down on its other side before we learned that 
the night before Dundonald had raised the siege. 
We learned this from long trains of artillery 
and regiments of infantry which already were 
moving forward over the great plain which lies 
between Pieter's and Bulwana. We learned it 
also from the silence of conscientious, dutiful 
correspondents, who came galloping back as we 
galloped forward, and who made wide detours 
at sight of us, or who, when we hailed them, 
lashed their ponies over the red rocks and pre- 
tended not to hear, each unselfishly turning his 
back on Ladysmith in the hope that he might 
be the first to send word that the "Doomed City" 
was relieved. This would enable one paper to 
say that it had the news "on the street" five min- 

i66 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

utes earlier than its hated rivals. We found that 
the rivalry of our respective papers bored us. 
We condemned it as being childish and weak. 
London, New York, Chicago were names, they 
were spots thousands of leagues away: Lady- 
smith was just across that mountain. If our 
horses held out at the pace, we would be — after 
Dundonald — the first men in. We imagined that 
we would see hysterical women and starving men. 
They would wring our hands, and say, *'God bless 
you," and we would halt our steaming horses in 
the market-place, and distribute the news of the 
outside world, and tobacco. There would be 
shattered houses, roofless homes, deep pits in 
the roadways where the shells had burst and 
buried themselves. We would see the entombed 
miner at the moment of his deliverance, we would 
be among the first from the outer world to break 
the spell of his silence; the first to receive the 
brunt of the imprisoned people's gratitude and 
rejoicings. 

Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers 
that employed us that we should not send them 
news, but that we should be the first to enter 
Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges 
of what was best to do. How like them to try 
to dictate to us from London and New York, 

167 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

when we were on the spot! It was absurd. We 
shouted this to each other as we raced in and out 
of the long confused column, lashing viciously 
with our whips. We stumbled around pieces 
of artillery, slid in between dripping water-carts, 
dodged the horns of weary oxen, scattered com- 
panies of straggling Tommies, and ducked under 
protruding tent-poles on the baggage-wagons, and 
at last came out together again in advance of the 
dusty column. 

" Besides, we don't know where the press-censor 
is, do we ?" No, of course we had no idea where 
the press-censor was, and unless he said that 
Ladysmith was relieved, the fact that twenty- 
five thousand other soldiers said so counted for 
idle gossip. Our papers could not expect us to 
go riding over mountains the day Ladysmith 
was relieved, hunting for a press-censor. "That 
press-censor," gasped Hartland, "never — ^is — 
where he — ought to be." The words were 
bumped out of him as he was shot up and down 
in the saddle. That was it. It was the press- 
censor's fault. Our consciences were clear now. 
If our papers worried themselves or us because 
they did not receive the great news until every one 
else knew of it, it was all because of that press- 
censor. We smiled again and spurred the horses 

i68 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

forward. We abused the press-censor roundly — 
we were extremely indignant with him. It was 
so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was 
relieved. ** Confound him," we muttered, and 
grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel 
when we were playing truant from school. 

We were nearing Pieter's Station now, and 
were half-way to Ladysmith. But the van of 
the army was still about us. Was it possible 
that it stretched already into the beleaguered 
city ? Were we, after all, to be cheated of the 
first and freshest impressions .? The tall lancers 
turned at the sound of the horses' hoofs and 
stared, infantry officers on foot smiled up at us 
sadly, they were dirty and dusty and sweating, 
they carried rifles and cross belts like the Tom- 
mies, and they knew that we outsiders who were 
not under orders would see the chosen city before 
them. Some of them shouted to us, but we only 
nodded and galloped on. We wanted to get rid 
of them all, but they were interminable. When 
we thought we had shaken them oflT, and that we 
were at last in advance, we would come upon a 
group of them resting on the same ground their 
shells had torn up during the battle the day before. 

We passed Boer laagers marked by empty 
cans and broken saddles and black, cold camp- 

169 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

fires. At Pieter's Station the blood was still fresh 
on the grass where two hours before some of the 
South African Light Horse had been wounded. 

The Boers were still on Bulwana then ? Per- 
haps, after all, we had better turn back and try 
to find that press-censor. But we rode on and 
saw Pieter's Station, as we passed it, as an ab- 
surd relic of by-gone days when bridges were 
intact and trains ran on schedule time. One 
door seen over the shoulder as we galloped past 
read, "Station Master's Office — Private," and in 
contempt of that stern injunction, which would 
make even the first-class passenger hesitate, one of 
our shells had knocked away the half of the door 
and made its privacy a mockery. We had only 
to follow the track now and we would arrive in 
time — unless the Boers were still on Bulwana. 
We had shaken off the army, and we were two 
miles in front of it, when six men came galloping 
toward us in an unfamiliar uniform. They passed 
us far to the right, regardless of the trail, and gal- 
loping through the high grass. We pulled up 
when we saw them, for they had green facings to 
their gray uniforms, and no one with Bullet's 
column wore green facings. 

We gave a yell in chorus. "Are you from 
Ladysmith ?" we shouted. The men, before they 

170 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

answered, wheeled and cheered, and came toward 
us laughing jubliant. "We're the first men out," 
cried the officer and we rode in among them, 
shaking hands and oflFering, our good wishes. 
** We're glad to see you," we said. "We're glad 
to see you^^ they said. It was not an original 
greeting, but it seemed sufficient to all of us. 
"Are the Boers on Bulwana?" we asked. "No, 
they've trekked up Dundee way. You can go 
right in." 

We parted at the word and started to go right 
in. We found the culverts along the railroad cut 
away and the bridges down, and that galloping 
ponies over the roadbed of a railroad is a difficult 
feat at the best, even when the road is in working 
order. 

Some men, cleanly dressed and rather pale- 
looking, met us and said: "Good-morning." 
"Are you from Ladysmith.?" we called. "No, 
we're from the neutral camp," they answered. 
We were the first men from outside they had 
seen in four months, and that was the extent 
of their interest or information. They had put 
on their best clothes, and were walking along 
the track to Colenso to catch a train south to 
Durban or to Maritzburg, to any place out of 
the neutral camp. They might have been som- 

171 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

nambulists for all they saw of us, or of the Boer 
trenches and the battle-field before them. But 
we found them of greatest interest, especially 
their clean clothes. Our column had not seen 
clean linen in six weeks, and the sight of these 
civilians in white duck and straw hats, and carry- 
ing walking-sticks, coming toward us over the 
railroad ties, made one think it was Sunday at 
home and these were excursionists to the suburbs. 

We had been riding through a roofless tunnel, 
with the mountain and the great dam on one 
side, and the high wall of the railway cutting 
on the other, but now just ahead of us lay the 
open country, and the exit of the tunnel barri- 
caded by twisted rails and heaped-up ties and 
bags of earth. Bulwana was behind us. For 
eight miles it had shut out the sight of our goal, 
but now, directly in front of us, was spread a 
great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red 
Cross flags — the neutral camp — and beyond that, 
four miles away, shimmering and twinkling sleep- 
ily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs of 
Ladysmith. 

We gave a gasp of recognition and galloped 
into and through the neutral camp. Natives 
of India in great turbans, Indian women in 
gay shawls and nose-rings, and black Kaffirs in 

172 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

discarded khaki looked up at us dully from the 
earth floors of their huts, and when we shouted 
"Which way ?'' and "Where is the bridge ?" only 
stared, or pointed vaguely, still staring. 

After all, we thought, they are poor creatures, 
incapable of emotion. Perhaps they do not 
know how glad we are that they have been res- 
cued. They do not understand that we want 
to shake hands with everybody and offer our 
congratulations. Wait until we meet our own 
people, we said, they will understand! It was 
such a pleasant prospect that we whipped the 
unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed, 
not because they needed it, but because we 
were too excited and impatient to sit motionless. 

In our haste we lost our way among innumer- 
able little trees; we disagreed as to which one 
of the many cross-trails led home to the bridge. 
We slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies 
over one steep place, and to haul them up another, 
and at last the right road lay before us, and a 
hundred yards ahead a short iron bridge and a 
Gordon Highlander waited to welcome us, to 
receive our first greetings and an assorted collec- 
tion of cigarettes. Hartland was riding a thorough- 
bred polo pony and passed the gallant defender 
of Ladysmith without a kind look or word, but 

173 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

Blackwood and I galloped up more decorously, 
smiling at him with good-will. The soldier, who 
had not seen a friend from the outside world in 
four months, leaped in front of us and presented 
a heavy gun and a burnished bayonet. 

"Halt, there," he cried. "Where's your pass ?" 
Of course it showed excellent discipline — we 
admired it immensely. We even overlooked the 
fact that he should think Boer spies would enter 
the town by way of the main bridge and at 
a gallop. We liked his vigilance, we admired 
his discipline, but in spite of that his reception 
chilled us. We had brought several things with 
us that we thought they might possibly want in 
Ladysmith, but we had entirely forgotten to bring 
a pass. Indeed I do not believe one of the twenty- 
five thousand men who had been fighting for six 
weeks to relieve Ladysmith had supplied himself 
with one. The night before, when the Ladysmith 
sentries had tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in 
the same way, and demanded a pass from them, 
there was not one in the squadron. 

We crossed the bridge soberly and entered 
Ladysmith at a walk. Even the ponies looked 
disconcerted and crestfallen. After the high 
grass and the mountains of red rock, where 
there was not even a tent to remind one of a 

174 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

roof-tree, the stone cottages and shop-windows 
and chapels and well-ordered hedges of the main 
street of Ladysmith made it seem a wealthy 
and attractive suburb. When we entered, a 
Sabbath-like calm hung upon the town; officers 
in the smartest khaki and glistening Stowassers 
observed us askance, little girls in white pina- 
fores passed us with eyes cast down, a man on 
a bicycle looked up, and then, in terror lest we 
might speak to him, glued his eyes to the wheel 
and "scorched" rapidly. We trotted forward 
and halted at each street crossing, looking to 
the right and left in the hope that some one might 
nod to us. From the opposite end of the town 
General Duller and his staff came toward us 
slowly — the house-tops did not seem to sway — 
it was not ** roses, roses all the way." The Ger- 
man army marching into Paris received as hearty 
a welcome. "Why didn't you people cheer 
General Duller when he came in .? " we asked 
later. "Oh, was that General Duller.?" they 
inquired. "We didn't recognize him." "Dut 
you knew he was a general officer, you knew he 
was the first of the relieving column.?" "Ye-es, 
but we didn't know who he was." 

I decided that the bare fact of the relief of 
Ladysmith was all I would be able to wire to 

175 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

my neglected paper, and with remorses started 
to find the Ladysmith censor. Two officers, 
with whom I ventured to break the hush that 
hung upon the town by asking my way, said 
they were going in the direction of the censor. 
We rode for some distance in guarded silence. 
Finally, one of them, with an inward struggle, 
brought himself to ask, **Are you from the out- 
side?" 

I was forced to admit that I was. I felt that 
I had taken an unwarrantable liberty in intrud- 
ing on a besieged garrison. I wanted to say that 
I had lost my way and had ridden into the town 
by mistake, and that I begged to be allowed to 
withdraw with apologies. The other officer woke 
up suddenly and handed me a printed list of the 
prices which had been paid during the siege for 
food and tobacco. He seemed to offer it as being 
in some way an official apology for his starved 
appearance. The price of cigars struck me as 
especially pathetic, and I commented on it. The 
first officer gazed mournfully at the blazing sun- 
shine before him. "I have not smoked a cigar in 
two months," he said. My surging sympathy, 
and my terror at again offending the haughty 
garrison, combated so fiercely that it was only 
with a great effort that I produced a handful. 

176 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

"Will you have these?'' The other officer 
started in his saddle so violently that I thought 
his horse had stumbled, but he also kept his 
eyes straight in front. ** Thank you, I v^ill 
take one if I may — just one," said the first 
officer. "Are you sure I am not robbing you.?" 
They each took one, but they refused to put the 
rest of the cigars in their pockets. As the printed 
list stated that a dozen matches sold for ^1.75, I 
handed them a box of matches. Then a beauti- 
ful thing happened. They lit the cigars and at 
the first taste of the smoke — and they were not 
good cigars — an almost human expression of 
peace and good-vs^ill and utter abandonment to 
joy spread over their yellov^ skins and cracked 
lips and fever-lit eyes. The first man dropped 
his reins and put his hands on his hips and threw 
back his head and shoulders and closed his eye- 
lids. I felt that I had intruded at a moment 
which should have been left sacred. 

Another boy officer in stainless khaki and 
beautifully turned out, polished and burnished 
and varnished, but with the same yellow skin 
and sharpened cheek-bones and protruding teeth, 
a skeleton on horse-back, rode slowly toward us 
down the hill. As he reached us he glanced up 
and then swayed in his saddle, gazing at my com- 

177 



[Price List During the Siege\ 

E I e 8 E 



OF 



X/^ ID IT S DN^ I T 131, 

189^1900. 




q£ oerti/y thcut th& foUowvn^gt aura' 
th& oorreC't wrvd hiyk&st prleers n&a^lis&d 
at my so/l&s iy t^uilio oSiuotiofb durrinfjf 
tke^ above (Sieye.^ 

OOE DYSON, 

Ladysmith, 

February 2X5/, i900» 
178 









£ B. 


d. 


14^ lbs. Oatmeal 


'' •»• 


•«• 


2 1^ 


6 


Condensed Milk, per tfn 


• • • 


... 


10 





I lb. Beef Fat 


••• 


••• 


II 





I lb. Tin Coffee ... 


••• 


r»»* 


17 





2 lb. Tin Tongue ... 


"A* 


»*• \ 


1 6 





I Sucking Pig 


m^ 


... 


« «7 





Eggs, per dozen ... 


... 


. a • 


2 8 





Fowls, each 


«♦ « 


• »• 


18 


6 


4 Small Cucumbers 


«N>« 


•-»» i 


15 


6 


Green Mealies, each 


• •• 


K-" 


3 


8 


Small plate Grapes 


... 


• .-k 


i 5 





I Small plate Apples 


• «. 


... 


12 


6 


I Plate Tomatoes ... 


... 


• *« 


Q 18 





I Vegetable Marrow 


..• 


• »• 


I 8 





I Plate Eschalots ... 


••• / 


•♦• 


11 





I Plate Potatoes ,.. 


«.. 


. *«» 


19 





3 Small bunches Carrots 


. •*•' 


«»• 


9 





1 Glass Jelly 


• .. 


1 ••. 


18 





I lb.. Bottle Jam ... 


• ■»% 


%«• 


I 1 1 





I -m. Tin Marmalade 


• .• 


... 


I 1 





f dozen Matches ... 


• •• 


... 


13 


6 


I pkt. Cigarettes ... 


... 


..^ 


« 5 





50 Cigars 


... 


....> 


9 5 





^Ib. Cake •' Fair Maid " Tobacco 


...• 


2 5 





J-!b. Cake " Fair Maid " 


»m., 


... 


3 5 





1 ft>. Sailors Tobacco 


• «. 


... 


2 3 





^Ib. tin " Capstan " Navy 


Cut Tob 


acco 


3 






179 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

panions fearfully. "Good God/' he cried. His 
brother officers seemed to understand, but made 
no answer, except to jerk their heads toward me. 
They were too occupied to speak. I handed the 
skeleton a cigar, and he took it in great embarrass- 
ment, laughing and stammering and blushing. 
Then I began to understand; I began to appre- 
ciate the heroic self-sacrifice of the first two, who, 
when they had been given the chance, had refused 
to fill their pockets. I knew then that it was 
an effort worthy of the V. C. 

The censor was at his post, and a few min- 
utes later a signal officer on Convent Hill helio- 
graphed my cable to Bulwana, where, six hours 
after the Boers had abandoned it, Buller's own 
helios had begun to dance, and they speeded the 
cable on its long journey to the newspaper office 
on the Thames Embankment. 

When one descended to the streets again — 
there are only two streets which run the full 
length of the town — and looked for signs of 
the siege, one found them not in the shattered 
houses, of which there seemed surprisingly few, 
but in the starved and fever-shaken look of the 
people. 

The cloak of indifference which every English- 
man wears, and his instinctive dislike to make 

i8o 




>. 

^ 

c^ 

^ 



B 

O 

C 

o 

h-I 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

much of his feelings, and, in this case, his pluck, 
at first concealed from us how terribly those who 
had been inside of Ladysmith had suffered, and 
how near to the breaking point they were. Their 
faces were the real index to what they had passed 
through. 

Any one who had seen our men at Montauk 
Point or in the fever camp at Siboney needed no 
hospital Hst to tell him of the pitiful condition of 
the garrison. The skin on their faces was yel- 
low, and drawn sharply over the brow and cheek- 
bones; their teeth protruded, and they shambled 
along like old men, their voices ranging from a 
feeble pipe to a deep whisper. In this pitiable 
condition they had been forced to keep night- 
watch on the hill-crests, in the rain, to lie in the 
trenches, and to work on fortifications and bomb- 
proofs. And they were expected to do all of 
these things on what strength they could get from 
horse-meat, biscuits of the toughness and com- 
position of those that are fed to dogs, and on 
"mealies," which is what we call corn. 

That first day in Ladysmith gave us a faint 
experience as to what the siege meant. The 
correspondents had disposed of all their tobacco, 
and within an hour saw starvation staring them 
in the face, and raced through the town to rob 

i8i 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

fellow-correspondents who had just arrived. The 
new-comers in their turn had soon distributed all 
they owned, and came tearing back to beg one 
of their own cigarettes. We tried to buy grass 
for our ponies, and were met with pitying con- 
tempt; we tried to buy food for ourselves, and were 
met with open scorn. I went to the only hotel 
which was open in the place, and offered large 
sums for a cup of tea. 

"Put up your money," said the Scotchman 
in charge, sharply. ** What's the good of your 
money ? Can your horse eat money ? Can you 
eat money ? Very well, then, put it away." 

The great dramatic moment after the raising 
of the siege was the entrance into Ladysmith 
of the relieving column. It was a magnificent, 
manly, and moving spectacle. You must im- 
agine the dry, burning heat, the fine, yellow dust, 
the white glare of the sunshine, and in the heat 
and glare and dust the great interminable column 
of men in ragged khaki crowding down the main 
street, twenty-two thousand strong, cheering and 
shouting, with the sweat running off their red faces 
and cutting little rivulets in the dust that caked 
their cheeks. Some of them were so glad that, 
though in the heaviest marching order, they 
leaped up and down and stepped out of line to 

182 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

dance to the music of the bagpipes. For hours 
they crowded past, laughing, joking, and cheering, 
or staring ahead of them, with hps wide apart, 
panting in the heat and choking with the dust, 
but always ready to turn again and wave their 
helmets at Sir George White. 

It was a pitiful contrast which the two forces 
presented. The men of the garrison were in 
clean khaki, pipe-clayed and brushed and pol- 
ished, but their tunics hung on them as loosely 
as the flag around its pole, the skin on their 
cheek-bones was as tight and as yellow as the 
belly of a drum, their teeth protruded through 
parched, cracked lips, and hunger, fever, and 
suffering stared from out their eyes. They 
were so ill and so feeble that the mere exercise 
of standing was too severe for their endurance, 
and many of them collapsed, falling back to the 
sidewalk, rising to salute only the first troop of 
each succeeding regiment. This done, they would 
again sink back and each would sit leaning his 
head against his musket, or with his forehead 
resting heavily on his folded arms. In com- 
parison the relieving column looked like giants as 
they came in with a swinging swagger, their uni- 
forms blackened with mud and sweat and blood- 
stains, their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blis- 

183 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

tered and tanned by the dust and sun. They 
made a picture of strength and health and aggres- 
siveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest 
when the battalion of the Devons that had been 
on foreign service passed the "reserve" battalion 
which had come from England. The men of 
the two battalions had parted five years before in 
India, and they met again in Ladysmith, with 
the men of one battalion lining the streets, sick, 
hungry, and yellow, and the others, who had been 
fighting six weeks to reach it, marching toward 
them, robust, red-faced, and cheering mightily. 
As they met they gave a shout of recognition, and 
the men broke ranks and ran forward, calling 
each other by name, embracing, shaking hands, 
and punching each other in the back and shoul- 
ders. It was a sight that very few men watched 
unmoved. Indeed, the whole three hours was one 
of the most "brutal assaults upon the feelings" 
that it has been my lot to endure. One felt he 
had been entirely lifted out of the politics of the 
war, and the question of the wrongs of the Boers 
disappeared before a simple propostiton of brave 
men saluting brave men. 

Early in the campaign, when his officers had 
blundered. General White had dared to write: "I 
alone am to blame." But in this triumohal pro- 

184 



The Relief of Ladysmith 

cession twenty-two thousand gentlemen in khaki 
wiped that line off the slate, and wrote, "Well 
done, sir,'' in its place, as they passed before him 
through the town he had defended and saved. 



^^5 



Ill 

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE 

THE Boer ** front'' was at Brandfort, and, as 
Lord Roberts was advancing upon that place, 
one already saw in the head-lines, "The Battle of 
Brandfort." But before our train drew out of 
Pretoria Station we learned that the English had 
just occupied Brandfort, and that the Boer front 
had been pushed back to Winburg. 

We decided that Brandfort was an impossible 
position to hold anyway, and that we had better 
leave the train at Winburg. We found some 
selfish consolation for the Boer repulse, in the 
fact that it shortened our railroad journey by 
one day. The next morning when we awoke at 
the Vaal River Station the train despatcher in- 
formed us that during the night the "Rooineks" 
had taken Winburg, and that the burghers were 
gathered at Smaaldel. 

We agreed not to go to Winburg, but to stop off 
at Smaaldel. We also agreed that Winburg was 
an impossible position to hold. When at eleven 
o'clock the train reached Kroonstad, we learned 
that Lord Roberts was in Smaaldel. It was 

i86 



The Night Before the Battle 

then evident that if our train kept on and the 
British army kept on there would be a coUision. 
So we stopped at Kroonstad. In talking it over 
we decided that, owing to its situation, Smaaldel 
was an impossible position to hold. 

The Sand River, which runs about forty miles 
south of Kroonstad, was the last place in the 
Free State at which the burghers could hope 
to make a stand, and at the bridge where the 
railroad spans the river, and at a drift ten miles 
lower down, the Boers and Free Staters had col- 
lected to the number of four thousand. Lord 
Roberts and his advancing column, which was 
known to contain thirty-five thousand men, were 
a few miles distant from the opposite bank of the 
Sand River. There was an equal chance that the 
English would attempt to cross at the drift or at 
the bridge. We thought they would cross at the 
drift, and stopped for the night at Ventersburg, 
a town ten miles from the river. 

Ventersburg, in comparison with Kroonstad, 
where we had left them rounding up stray burgh- 
ers and hurrying them to the firing-line, and 
burning official documents in the streets, was 
calm. 

Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating 
documents nor driving weary burghers from its 

187 



The Night Before the Battle 

solitary street. It was making them welcome at 
Jones's Hotel. The sun had sunk an angry crim- 
son, the sure sign of a bloody battle on the mor- 
row, and a full moon had turned the dusty street 
and the veldt into which it disappeared into a field 
of snow. 

The American scouts had halted at Jones's 
Hotel, and the American proprietor was giving 
them drinks free. Their cowboy spurs jingled 
on the floor of the bar-room, on the boards of 
the verandas, on the stone floor of the kitchen, 
and in the billiard-room, where they were play- 
ing pool as joyously as though the English were 
not ten miles away. Grave, awkward burghers 
rode up, each in a cloud of dust, and leaving his 
pony to wander in the street and his rifle in a 
corner, shook hands with every one solemnly, and 
asked for coff*ee. Italians of Garibaldi's red- 
shirted army, Swedes and Danes in semi-uniform. 
Frenchman in high boots and great sombreros, 
Germans with the sabre cuts on their cheeks that 
had been given them at the university, and Russian 
officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little 
dining-room, and by the light of a smoky lamp 
talked in many tongues of Spion Kop, Sannahs- 
post. Fourteen Streams, and the battle on the 
morrow. 

i88 



The Night Before the Battle 

They were sun-tanned, dusty, stained, and 
many of them with wounds in bandages. They 
came from every capital of Europe, and as each 
took his turn around the crowded table, they 
drank to the health of every nation, save one. 
When they had eaten they picked up the pony's 
bridle from the dust and melted into the moon- 
light with a wave of the hand and a "good luck 
to you." There were no bugles to sound "boots 
and saddles" for them, no sergeants to keep 
them in hand, no officers to pay for their rations 
and issue orders. 

Each was his own officer, his conscience was 
his bugle-call, he gave himself orders. They 
were all equal, all friends; the cowboy and the 
Russian Prince, the French socialist from La 
Villette or Montmartre, with a red sash around 
his velveteen breeches, and the little French 
nobleman from the Cercle Royal who had never 
before felt the sun, except when he had played 
lawn tennis on the Isle de Puteaux. Each had 
his bandolier and rifle; each was minding his 
own business, which was the business of all — to 
try and save the independence of a free people. 

The presence of these foreigners, with rifle 
in hand, showed the sentiment and sympathies 
of the countries from which they came. These 

189 



The Night Before the Battle 

men were Europe's real ambassadors to the 
Republic of the Transvaal. The hundreds of 
thousands of their countrymen who had remained 
at home held toward the Boer the same feelings, 
but they were not so strongly moved; not so 
strongly as to feel that they must go abroad to 
fight. 

These foreigners were not the exception in 
opinion, they were only exceptionally advent- 
urous, exceptionally liberty-loving. They were 
not soldiers of fortune, for the soldier of fortune 
fights for gain. These men receive no pay, no 
emolument, no reward. They were the few 
who dared do what the majority of their coun- 
trymen in Europe thought. 

At Jones's Hotel that night, at Ventersburg, 
it was as though a jury composed of men from 
all of Europe and the United States had gathered 
in judgment on the British nation. 

Outside in the moonlight in the dusty road 
two bearded burghers had halted me to ask 
the way to the house of the commandant. Be- 
tween them on a Boer pony sat a man, erect, slim- 
waisted, with well-set shoulders and chin in air, 
one hand holding the reins high, the other with 
knuckles down resting on his hip. The Boer 
pony he rode, nor the moonlight, nor the veldt 

190 



The Night Before the Battle 

behind him, could disguise his seat and pose. 
It was as though I had been suddenly thrown 
back into London and was passing the cuirassed, 
gauntleted guardsman, motionless on his black 
charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall. Only 
now, instead of a steel breastplate, he shivered 
through his thin khaki, and instead of the high 
boots, his legs were wrapped in twisted putties. 

"When did they take you ?" I asked. 

"Early this morning. I was out scouting,'' 
he said. He spoke in a voice so well trained and 
modulated that I tried to see his shoulder-straps. 

"Oh, you are an officer.'''' I said. 

"No, sir, a trooper. First Life Guards." 

But in the moonlight I could see him smile, 
whether at my mistake or because it was not a 
mistake I could not guess. There are many 
gentlemen rankers in this war. 

He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet 
marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing 
a high hat in a church. From the billiard-room, 
where the American scouts were playing pool, 
came the click of the ivory and loud, light-hearted 
laughter; frcyn the veranda the sputtering of 
many strange tongues and the deep, lazy voices of 
the Boers. There were Boers to the left of him, 
Boers to the right of him, pulling at their long, 

191 



The Night Before the Battle 

drooping pipes and sending up big rings of white 
smoke in the white moonlight. 

He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd 
about him under half-lowered eyelids, but as 
unmoved as though he saw no one. He threw his 
arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head 
down against his chest and began talking to it. 

It was as though he wished to emphasize his 
loneliness. 

"You are not tired, are you ? No, you're not," 
he said. His voice was as kindly as though he 
were speaking to a child. 

"Oh, but you can't be tired. What?" he 
whispered. "A little hungry, perhaps. Yes?" 
He seemed to draw much comfort from his friend 
the pony, and the pony rubbed his head against 
the Englishman's shoulder. 

"The commandant says he will question you 
in the morning. You will come with us to the 
jail now," his captor directed. "You will find 
three of your people there to talk to. I will go 
bring a blanket for you, it is getting cold." And 
they rode off together into the night. 

Two days later he would have heard through 
the windows of Jones's Hotel the billiard balls 
still clicking joyously, but the men who held the 
cues then would have worn helmets like his own. 

192 



The Night Before the Battle 

The original Jones, the proprietor of Jones's 
Hotel, had fled. The man who succeeded him was 
also a refugee, and the present manager was an 
American from Cincinnati. He had never before 
kept a hotel, but he confided to me that it was 
not a bad business, as he found that on each drink 
sold he made a profit of a hundred per cent. The 
proprietress was a lady from Brooklyn; her hus- 
band, another American, was a prisoner with 
Cronje at St. Helena. She was in considerable 
doubt as to whether she ought to run before the 
British arrived, or wait and chance being made 
a prisoner. She said she would prefer to escape^ 
but what with standing on her feet all day in 
the kitchen preparing meals for hungry burghers 
and foreign volunteers, she was too tired to get 
away. 

War close at hand consists so largely of com^ 
monplaces and trivial details that I hope I may 
be pardoned for recording the anxieties and cares 
of this lady from Brooklyn. Her point of view 
so admirably illustrates one side of war. It is 
only when you are ten years away from it, or ten 
thousand miles away from it, that you forget the 
dull places, and only the moments loom up which 
are terrible, picturesque, and momentous. We 
have read, in ''Vanity Fair," of the terror and the 

193 



The Night Before the Battle 

mad haste to escape of the people of Brussels on 
the eve of Waterloo. That is the obvious and 
dramatic side. 

That is the picture of war you remember and 
w^hich appeals. As a rule, people like to read of 
the rumble of cannon through the streets of Ven- 
tersburg, the silent, dusty columns of the re-en- 
forcements passing in the moonlight, the gallop- 
ing hoofs of the aides suddenly beating upon the 
night air and growing fainter and dying away, 
the bugle-calls from the camps along the river, 
the stamp of spurred boots as the general himself 
enters the hotel and spreads the blue-print maps 
upon the table, the clanking sabres of his staff, 
standing behind him in the candle-light, whisper- 
ing and tugging at their gauntlets while the great 
man plans his attack. You must stop with the 
British army if you want bugle-calls and clank- 
ing sabres and gauntlets. They are a part of 
the panoply of war and of warriors. But we 
saw no warriors at Ventersburg that night, only a 
few cattle-breeders and farmers who were fighting 
for the land they had won from the lion and the 
bushman, and with them a mixed company of 
gentleman adventurers — ^gathered around a table 
discussing other days in other lands. The pict- 
ure of war which is most familiar is the one of 

194 



The Night Before the Battle 

the people of Brussels fleeing from the city with 
the French guns booming in the distance, or as 
one sees it in "Shenandoah," where aides gallop 
on and off the stage and the night signals flash 
from both sides of the valley. That is the ob- 
vious and dramatic side; the other side of war 
is the night before the battle, at Jones's Hotel; 
the landlady in the dining-room with her elbows 
on the table, fretfully deciding that after a day 
in front of the cooking-stove she is too tired to 
escape an invading army, declaring that the one 
place at which she would rather be at that mo- 
ment was Green's restaurant in Philadelphia, 
the heated argument that immediately follows be- 
tween the foreign legion and the Americans as to 
whether Rector's is not better than the Cafe de 
Paris, and the general agreement that Ritz cannot 
hope to run two hotels in London without being 
robbed. That is how the men talked and acted 
on the eve of a battle. We heard no galloping 
aides, no clanking spurs, only the click of the 
clipped billiard balls as the American scouts (who 
were killed thirty-six hours later) knocked them 
about the torn billiard-cloth, the drip, drip of 
the kerosene from a blazing, sweating lamp, which 
struck the dirty table-cloth, with the regular tick- 
ing of a hall clock, and the complaint of the piano 

195 



The Night Before the Battle 

from the hotel parlor, where the correspondent of 
a Boston paper was picking out "Hello, My 
Baby," laboriously with one finger. War is not 
so terribly dramatic or exciting — at the time; and 
the real trials of war — at the time, and not as one 
later remembers them — consist largely in looting 
fodder for your ponies and in bribing the sta- 
tion-master to put on an open truck in which to 
carry them. 

We were wakened about two o'clock in the 
morning by a loud knocking on a door and the 
distracted voice of the local justice of the peace 
calling upon the landlord to rouse himself and 
fly. The English, so the voice informed the 
various guests, as door after door was thrown 
open upon the court-yard, were at Ventersburg 
Station, only two hours away. The justice of the 
peace wanted to buy or to borrow a horse, and 
wanted it very badly, but a sleepy-eyed and scepti- 
cal audience told him unfeelingly that he was 
either drunk or dreaming, and only the landlady, 
now apparently refreshed after her labors, was 
keenly, even hysterically, intent on instant flight. 
She sat up in her bed with her hair in curl papers 
and a revolver beside her, and through her open 
door shouted advice to her lodgers. But they were 
unsympathetic, and reassured her only by bang- 

196 



The Night Before the Battle 

ing their doors and retiring with profane grum- 
bling, and in a few moments the silence was broken 
only by the voice of the justice as he fled down the 
main street of Ventersburg offering his kingdom 
for a horse. 

The next morning we rode out to the Sand 
River to see the Boer positions near the drift, 
and met President Steyn in his Cape cart coming 
from them on his way to the bridge. Ever since 
the occupation of Bloemfontein, the London 
papers had been speaking of him as **the Late 
President," as though he were dead. He im- 
pressed me, on the contrary, as being very much 
alive and very much the President, although his 
executive chamber was the dancing-hall of a hotel 
and his roof-tree the hood of a Cape cart. He 
stood in the middle of the road, and talked hope- 
fully of the morrow. He had been waiting, he 
said, to see the development of the enemy's at- 
tack, but the British had not appeared, and, as he 
believed they would not advance that day, he was 
going on to the bridge to talk to his burghers and 
to consult with General Botha. He was much 
more a man of the world and more the profes- 
sional politician than President Kruger. I use 
the words "professional politician" in no un- 
pleasant sense, but meaning rather that he was 

197 



The Night Before the Battle 

ready, tactful, and diplomatic. For instance, 
he gave to whatever he said the air of a confi- 
dence reserved especially for the ear of the per- 
son to whom he spoke. He showed none of the 
bitterness which President Kruger exhibits to- 
ward the British, but took the tone toward the 
English Government of the most critical and 
amused tolerance. Had he heard it, it would 
have been intensely annoying to any English- 
man. 

"I see that the London Chronichy* he said, 
"asks if, since I have become a rebel, I do not 
lose my rights as a Barrister of the Temple .? 
Of course, we are no more rebels than the Span- 
iards were rebels against the United States. By 
a great stretch of the truth, under the suzerainty 
clause, the burghers of the Transvaal might be 
called rebels, but a Free Stater — never! It is 
not the animosity of the English which I mind," 
he added, thoughtfully, "but their depressing igno- 
rance of their own history." 

His cheerfulness and hopefulness, even though 
one guessed they were assumed, commanded one's 
admiration. He was being hunted out of one 
village after another, the miles of territory still 
free to him were hourly shrinking — in a few 
days he would be a refugee in the Transvaal; 

198 




President Steyn on his way to Sand River battle 



The Night Before the Battle 

but he stood in the open veldt with all his pos- 
sessions in the cart behind him, a president with- 
out a republic, a man without a home, but still 
full of pluck, cheerful and unbeaten. 

The farm-house of General Andrew Cronje 
stood just above the drift and was the only 
conspicuous mark for the English guns on our 
side of the river, so in order to protect it the 
general had turned it over to the ambulance 
corps to be used as a hospital. They had lashed 
a great Red Cross flag to the chimney and filled 
the clean shelves of the generously built kitchen 
with bottles of antiseptics and bitter-smelling 
drugs and surgeons' cutlery. President Steyn 
gave me a letter to Dr. Rodgers Reid, who was in 
charge, and he offered us our choice of the de- 
serted bedrooms. It was a most welcome shelter, 
and in comparison to the cold veldt the hospital 
was a haven of comfort. Hundreds of cooing 
doves, stumbling over the roof of the barn, helped 
to fill the air with their peaceful murmur. It was 
a strange overture to a battle, but in time I learned 
to not listen for any more martial prelude. The 
Boer does not make a business of war, and when 
he is not actually fighting he pretends that he is 
camping out for pleasure. In his laager there 
are no warlike sounds, no sentries challenge, no 

199 



The Night Before the Battle 

bugles call. He has no duties to perform, for 
his Kaffir boys care for his pony, gather his wood, 
and build his fire. He has nothing to do but to 
wait for the next fight, and to make the time pass 
as best he can. In camp the burghers are Hke 
a party of children. They play games with each 
other, and play tricks upon each other, and en- 
gage in numerous wrestling bouts, a form of con- 
test of which they seem particularly fond. They 
are like children also in that they are direct and 
simple, and as courteous as the ideal child should 
be. Indeed, if I were asked what struck me as 
the chief characteristics of the Boer I should say 
they were the two qualities which the English 
have always disallowed him, his simplicity rather 
than his "cuteness,'* and his courtesy rather than 
his boorishness. 

The force that waited at the drift by Cronje's 
farm as it lay spread out on both sides of the 
river looked like a gathering of Wisconsin lum- 
bermen, of Adirondack guides and hunters halted 
at Paul Smith's, like a Methodist camp-meeting 
limited entirely to men. 

The eye sought in vain for rows of tents, for 
the horses at the picket line, for the flags that 
marked the head-quarters, the commissariat, the 
field telegraph, the field post-office, the A. S. C, 

200 



The Night Before the Battle 

the R. M. A. C, the C. O., and all the other com- 
binations of letters of the military alphabet. 

I remembered that great army of General 
Buller's as I saw it stretching out over the basin 
of the Tugela, like the children of Israel in num- 
ber, like Tammany Hall in organization and dis- 
cipline, with not a tent-pin missing; with hospi- 
tals as complete as those established for a hundred 
years in the heart of London; with search-lights, 
heliographs, war balloons, Roentgen rays, pon- 
toon bridges, telegraph wagons, and trenching 
tools, farriers with anvils, major-generals, map- 
makers, "gallopers," intelligence departments, 
even biographs and press-censors; every kind of 
thing and every kind of man that goes to make 
up a British army corps. I knew that seven miles 
from us just such another completely equipped 
and disciplined column was advancing to the op- 
posite bank of the Sand River. 

And opposed to it was this merry company 
of Boer farmers lying on the grass, toasting 
pieces of freshly killed ox on the end of a stick, 
their hobbled ponies foraging for themselves a 
half-mile away, a thousand men without a tent 
among them, without a field-glass. 

It was a picnic, a pastoral scene, not a scene 
of war. On the hills overlooking the drift were 

20I 



The Night Before the Battle 

the guns, but down along the banks the burghers 
were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns, 
many of them sung to the tunes famiUar in the 
service of the Episcopal Church, so that it sounded 
like a Sunday evening in the country at home. 
At the drift other burghers were watering the 
oxen, bathing and washing in the cold river; 
around the camp-fires others were smoking lux- 
uriously, with their saddles for pillows. The 
evening breeze brought the sweet smell of burn- 
ing wood, a haze of smoke from many fires, the 
lazy hum of hundreds of voices rising in the open 
air, the neighing of many horses, and the swift 
soothing rush of the river. 

When morning came to Cronje's farm it brought 
with it no warning nor sign of battle. We began 
to believe that the British army was an inven- 
tion of the enemy's. So we cooked bacon and 
fed the doves, and smoked on the veranda, moving 
our chairs around it with the sun, and argued as 
to whether we should stay where we were or go 
on to the bridge. At noon it was evident there 
would be no fight at the drift that day, so we 
started along the bank of the river, with the idea 
of reaching the bridge before nightfall. The trail 
lay on the English side of the river, so that we 
were in constant concern lest our white-hooded 

202 



The Night Before the Battle 

Cape cart would be seen by some of their scouts 
and we would be taken prisoners and forced to 
travel all the way back to Cape Town. We saw 
many herds of deer, but no scouts or lancers, 
and, such being the effect of many kopjes, lost all 
ideas as to where we were. We knew we were 
bearing steadily south toward Lord Roberts, who 
as we later learned, was then some three miles 
distant. 

About two o'clock his guns opened on our 
left, so we at least knew that we were still on the 
wrong side of the river and that we must be be- 
tween the Boer and the English artillery. Ex- 
cept for that, our knowledge of our geographical 
position was a blank, and we accordingly "out- 
spanned" and cooked more bacon. **Outspan- 
ning*' is unharnessing the ponies and mules and 
turning them out to graze, and takes three min- 
utes — "inspanning" is trying to catch them again, 
and takes from three to five hours. 

We started back over the trail over which we 
had come, and just at sunset saw a man appear 
from behind a rock and disappear again. Whether 
he was Boer or Briton I could not tell, but while 
I was examining the rock with my glasses two 
Boers came galloping forward and ordered me to 
"hands up." To sit with both arms in the air is 

203 



The Night Before the Battle 

an extremely ignominious position, and especially 
annoying if the pony is restless, so I compromised 
by waving my whip as high as I could reach with 
one hand, and still held in the horse with the 
other. The third man from behind the rock 
rode up at the same time. They said they had 
watched us coming from the English lines, and 
that we were prisoners. We assured them that 
for us nothing could be more satisfactory, because 
we now knew where we were, and because they 
had probably saved us a week's trip to Cape 
Town. They examined and approved of our 
credentials, and showed us the proper trail which 
we managed to follow until they had disappeared, 
when the trail disappeared also, and we were 
again lost in what seemed an interminable valley. 
But just before nightfall the fires of the commando 
showed in front of us and we rode into the camp 
of General Christian De Wet. He told us we 
could not reach the bridge that night, and showed 
us a farm-house on a distant kopje where we 
could find a place to spread our blankets. I was 
extremely glad to meet him, as he and General 
Botha are the most able and brave of the Boer 
generals. He was big, manly, and of impressive 
size, and, although he speaks English, he dictated 
to his adjutant many long and Old-World com- 

204 



The Night Before the Battle 

pllments to the Greater Republic across the 
seas. 

We found the people in the farm-house on 
the distant kopje quite hysterical over the near 
presence of the British, and the entire place in 
such an uproar that we slept out in the veldt. 
In the morning we were awakened by the sound 
of the Vickar-Maxim or the "pom-pom" as the 
English call it, or "bomb-Maxim'' as the Boers 
call it. By any name it was a remarkable gun 
and the most demoralizing of any of the smaller 
pieces which have been used in this campaign. 
One of its values is that its projectiles throw up 
sufficient dust to enable the gunner to tell exactly 
where they strike, and within a few seconds he 
is able to alter the range accordingly. In this 
way it is its own range-finder. Its bark is almost 
as dangerous as its bite, for its reports have a 
brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock, or 
a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg, 
and there is an unexplainable mocking sound to 
the reports, as though the gun were laughing at 
you. The English Tommies used to call it very 
aptly the "hyena gun." I found it much less 
offensive from the rear than when I was with the 
British, and in front of it. 

From the top of a kopje we saw that the battle 

20S 



The Night Before the Battle 

had at last begun and that the bridge was the 
objective point. The English came up in great 
lines and blocks and from so far away and in 
such close order that at first in spite of the khakr 
they looked as though they wore uniforms of blue. 
They advanced steadily, and two hours later when 
we had ridden to a kopje still nearer the bridge, 
they were apparently in the same formation as 
when we had first seen them, only now farms 
that had lain far in their rear were overrun by 
them and they encompassed the whole basin. An 
army of twenty-five thousand men advancing in 
full view across a great plain appeals to you as 
something entirely lacking in the human element. 
You do not think of it as a collection of very tired, 
dusty, and perspiring men with aching legs and 
parched lips, but as an unnatural phenomenon, 
or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway 
station, a cornfield, and a village with a single 
clutch of one of its tentacles. You would as 
soon attribute human qualities to a plague, a 
tidal wave, or a slowly slipping landslide. One 
of the tentacles composed of six thousand horse 
had detached itself and crossed the river below 
the bridge, where it was creeping up on Botha's 
right. We could see the burghers galloping 
before it toward Ventersburg. At the bridge 

206 



The Night Before the Battle 

General Botha and President Steyn stood in the 
open road and with upHfted arms waved the 
Boers back, calling upon them to stand. But 
the burghers only shook their heads and with 
averted eyes grimly and silently rode by them on 
the other side. They knew they were flanked, 
they knew the men in the moving mass in front 
of them were in the proportion of nine to 
one. 

When you looked down upon the lines of the 
English army advancing for three miles across 
the plain, one could hardly blame them. The 
burghers did not even raise their Mausers. One 
bullet, the size of a broken slate-pencil, fall- 
ing into a block three miles across and a mile 
deep, seems so inadequate. It was like trying 
to turn back the waves of the sea with a blow- 
pipe. 

It is true they had held back as many at Co- 
lenso, but the defensive positions there were mag- 
nificent, and since then six months had passed, 
during which time the same thirty thousand men 
who had been fighting then were fighting still, 
while the enemy was always new, with fresh re- 
cruits and re-enforcements arriving daily. 

As the EngHsh oflScers at Durban, who had so 
lately arrived from home that they wore swords, 

207 



The Night Before the Battle 

used to say with the proud consciousness of two 
hundred thousand men back of them: "It won't 
last much longer now. The Boers have had their 
belly full of fighting. They're fed up on it; 
that's what it is; they're fed up." 

They forgot that the Boers, who for three 
months had held Buller back at the Tugela, 
were the same Boers who were rushed across 
the Free State to rescue Cronje from Roberts, 
and who were then sent to meet the relief column 
at Fourteen Streams, and were then ordered back 
again to harass Roberts at Sannahspost, and who, 
at last, worn out, stale, heartsick, and hopeless at 
the unequal odds and endless fighting, fell back 
at Sand River. 

For three months thirty thousand men had 
been attempting the impossible task of endeavor- 
ing to meet an equal number of the enemy in three 
diflFerent places at the same time. 

I have seen a retreat in Greece when the men, 
before they left the trenches, stood up in them 
and raged and cursed at the advancing Turk, 
cursed at their government, at their king, at each 
other, and retreated with shame in their faces 
because they did so. 

But the retreat of the burghers of the Free 
State was not like that. They rose one by one 

208 



The Night Before the Battle 

and saddled their ponies, with the look in their 
faces of men who had been attending the funeral 
of a friend and who were leaving just before 
the coffin was swallowed in the grave. Some 
of them, for a long time after the greater num- 
ber of the commando had ridden away, sat upon 
the rocks staring down into the sunny valley 
below them, talking together gravely, rising to 
take a last look at the territory which was their 
own. The shells of the victorious British sang 
triumphantly over the heads of their own artillery, 
bursting impotently in white smoke or tearing 
up the veldt in fountains of dust. 

But they did not heed them. They did not 
even send a revengeful bullet into the approach- 
ing masses. The sweetness of revenge could 
not pay for what they had lost. They looked 
down upon the farm-houses of men they knew; 
upon their own farm-houses rising in smoke; 
they saw the Englishmen like a pest of locusts 
settling down around gardens and farm-houses 
still nearer, and swallowing them up. 

Their companions, already far on the way to 
safety, waved to them from the veldt to follow; 
an excited doctor carrying a wounded man 
warned us that the English were just below, 
storming the hill. "Our artillery is aiming at 

209 



The Night Before the Battle 

five hundred yards," he shouted, but still the 
remaining burghers stood immovable, leaning on 
their rifles, silent, homeless, looking down without 
rage or show of feeling at the great waves of khaki 
sweeping steadily toward them, and possessing 
their land. 



2IO 



THE JAPANESE-RUSSIAN WAR 



BATTLES I DID NOT SEE 

WE knew it was a battle because the Japa- 
nese officers told us it was. In other wars 
I had seen other battles, many sorts of battles, 
but I had never seen a battle like that one. Most 
battles are noisy, hurried, and violent, giving rise 
to an unnatural thirst and to the delusion that, 
by some unhappy coincidence, every man on the 
other side is shooting only at you. This delusion 
is not peculiar to myself. Many men have told 
me that in the confusion of battle they always get 
this exaggerated idea of their own importance. 
Down in Cuba I heard a colonel inform a group of 
brother officers that a Spanish field-piece had 
marked him for its own, and for an hour had 
been pumping shrapnel at him and at no one 
else. The interesting part of the story was that 
he believed it. 

But the battle of Anshantien was in no way 
disquieting. It was a noiseless, odorless, rubber- 
tired battle. So far as we were concerned it con- 
sisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over 
a mountain pass many miles distant. So many 

213 



Battles I Did Not See 

miles distant that when, with a glass, you could 
see a speck of fire twinkle in the sun like a helio- 
graph, you could not tell whether it was the 
flash from the gun or the flame from the shell. 
Neither could you tell whether the cigarette rings 
issued from the lips of the Japanese guns or 
from those of the Russians. The only thing about 
that battle of which you were certain was that it 
was a perfectly safe battle to watch. It was the 
first one I ever witnessed that did not require you 
to calmly smoke a pipe in order to conceal the 
fact that you were scared. But soothing as it 
was, the battle lacked what is called the human 
interest. There may have been men behind the 
guns, but as they were also behind Camel Hill 
and Saddle Mountain, eight miles away, our eyes, 
like those of Mr. Samuel Weller, "being only 
eyes," were not able to discover them. 

Our teachers, the three Japanese officers who 
were detailed to tell us about things we were not 
allowed to see, gazed at the scene of carnage with 
well-simulated horror. Their expressions of coun- 
tenance showed that should any one move the 
battle eight miles nearer, they were prepared to 
sell their lives dearly. When they found that 
none of us were looking at them or their battle, 
they were hurt. The reason no one was looking 

214 



Battles I Did Not See 

at them was because most of us had gone to sleep. 
The rest, with a bitter experience of Japanese 
promises, had doubted there would be a battle, 
and had prepared themselves with newspapers. 
And so, while eight miles away the preliminary 
battle to Liao-Yang was making history, we were 
lying on the grass reading two months' old news 
of the St. Louis Convention. 

The sight greatly disturbed our teachers. 

"You complain," they said, "because you are 
not allowed to see anything, and now, when we 
show you a battle, you will not look." 

Lewis, of the Heraldy eagerly seized his glasses 
and followed the track of the Siberian railway as it 
disappeared into the pass. 

"I beg your pardon, but I didn't know it was a 
battle," he apologized politely. "I thought it was 
a locomotive at Anshantien Station blowing off 
steam." 

And, so, teacher gave him a bad mark for dis- 
respect. 

It really was trying. 

In order to see this battle we had travelled half 
around the world, had then waited four wasted 
months at Tokio, then had taken a sea voyage of 
ten days, then for twelve days had ridden through 
mud and dust in pursuit of the army, then for 

215 



Battles I Did Not See 

twelve more days, while battles raged ten miles 
away, had been kept prisoners in a compound 
where five out of the eighteen correspondents were 
sick with dysentery or fever, and finally as a re- 
ward we were released from captivity and taken 
to see smoke rings eight miles away! That night 
a round-robin, which was signed by all, was sent 
to General Oku, pointing out to him that unless 
we were allowed nearer to his army than eight 
miles, our usefulness to the people who paid us 
our salaries was at an end. 

While waiting for an answer to this we were 
led out to see another battle. Either that we might 
not miss one minute of it, or that we should be 
too sleepy to see anything of it, we were started in 
black darkness, at three o'clock in the morning, 
the hour, as we are told, when one's vitality is at 
its lowest, and one which should be reserved for 
the exclusive use of burglars and robbers of hen 
roosts. Concerning that hour I learned this, that 
whatever its effects may be upon human beings, 
it finds a horse at his most strenuous moment. 
At that hour by the light of three paper lanterns 
we tried to saddle eighteen horses, donkeys, and 
ponies, and the sole object of each was to kick 
the light out of the lantern nearest him. We 
finally rode off through a darkness that was light- 

216 



Battles I Did Not See 

ened only by a gray, dripping fog, and in a silence 
broken only by the patter of rain upon the corn that 
towered high above our heads and for many miles 
hemmed us in. After an hour, Sataki, the teacher 
who acted as our guide, lost the trail and Captain 
Lionel James, of the Times, who wrote "On the 
Heels of De Wet," found it for him. Sataki, so 
our two other keepers told us, is an authority on 
international law, and he may be all of that and 
know all there is to know of three-mile limits and 
paper blockades, but when it came to picking up 
a trail, even in the bright sunlight when it lay 
weltering beneath his horse's nostrils, we always 
found that any correspondent with an experience 
of a few campaigns was of more general use. The 
trail ended at a muddy hill, a bare sugar-loaf of a 
hill, as high as the main tent of a circus and as 
abruptly sloping away. It was swept by a damp, 
chilling wind; a mean, peevish rain washed its 
sides, and they were so steep that if we sat upon 
them we tobogganed slowly downward, ploughing 
up the mud with our boot heels. Hungry, sleepy, 
in utter darkness, we clung to this slippery mound 
in its ocean of whispering millet like sailors 
wrecked in mid-sea upon a rock, and waited 
for the day. After two hours a gray mist came 
grudgingly, trees and rocks grew out of it, trenches 

217 



Battles I Did Not See 

appeared at our feet, and what had before looked 
like a lake of water became a mud village. 

Then, like shadows, the foreign attaches, whom 
we fondly hoped might turn out to be Russian 
Cossacks coming to take us prisoners and carry 
us off to breakfast, rode up in silence and were 
halted at the base of the hill. It seemed now, the 
audience being assembled, the orchestra might be- 
gin. But no hot-throated cannon broke the chill- 
ing, dripping, silence, no upheaval of the air spoke 
of Canet guns, no whirling shrapnel screamed and 
burst. Instead, the fog rolled back showing us 
miles of waving corn, the wet rails of the Sibe- 
rian Railroad glistening in the rain, and, masking 
the horizon, the same mountains from which the 
day before the smoke rings had ascended. They 
now were dark, brooding, their tops hooded in 
clouds. Somewhere in front of us hidden in the 
Kiao liang, hidden in the tiny villages, crouching 
on the banks of streams, concealed in trenches 
that were themselves concealed, Oku*s army, the 
army to which we were supposed to belong, was 
buried from our sight. And in the mountains on 
our right lay the Fourth Army, and twenty miles 
still farther to the right, Kuroki was closing in 
upon Liao-Yang. All of this we guessed, what 
we were told was very different, what we saw was 

218 



Battles I Did Not See 

nothing. In all, four hundred thousand men were 
not farther from us than four to thirty miles — and 
we saw nothing. We watched as the commissariat 
wagons carrying food to these men passed us by, 
the hospital stores passed us by, the transport 
carts passed us by, the coolies with reserve mounts, 
the last wounded soldier, straggler, and camp- 
follower passed us by. Like a big tidal wave 
Oku's army had swept forward leaving its unwel- 
come guests, the attaches and correspondents, 
forty lonely foreigners among seventy thousand 
Japanese, stranded upon a hill miles in the rear. 
Perhaps, as war, it was necessary, but it was not 
magnificent. 

That night Major Okabe, our head teacher, 
gave us the official interpretation of what had 
occurred. The Russians, he said, had retreated 
from Liao-Yang and were in open flight. Unless 
General Kuroki, who, he said, was fifty miles north 
of us, could cut them off they would reach Muk- 
den in ten days, and until then there would be 
no more fighting. The Japanese troops, he said, 
were in Liao-Yang, it had been abandoned with- 
out a fight. This he told us on the evening of the 
27th of August. 

The next morning Major Okabe delivered the 
answer of General Oku to our round-robin. He 

219 



Battles I Did Not See 

informed us that we had been as near to the fight- 
ing as we ever would be allowed to go. The near- 
est we had been to any fighting was four miles. 
Our experience had taught us that when the 
Japanese promised us we would be allowed to do 
something we wanted to do, they did not keep 
their promise; but that when they said we would 
not be allowed to do something we wanted to do^ 
they spoke the truth. Consequently, when Gen- 
eral Oku declared the correspondents would be 
held four miles in the rear, we believed he would 
keep his word. And, as we now know, he did, 
the only men who saw the fighting that later 
ensued being those who disobeyed his orders 
and escaped from their keepers. Those who had 
been ordered by their papers to strictly obey the 
regulations of the Japanese, and the military 
attaches, were kept by Oku nearly six miles in 
the rear. 

On the receipt of Oku's answer to the corre- 
spondents, Mr. John Fox, Jr., of Scribners Mag- 
azine, Mr. Milton Prior, of the London Illustrated 
News, Mr. George Lynch, of the London Morning 
Chronicle, and myself left the army. We were 
very sorry to go. Apart from the fact that we 
had not been allowed to see anything of the mili- 
tary operations, we were enjoying ourselves im- 

220 



•^*- 






Battles I Did Not See 

mensely. Personally, I never went on a campaign 
in a more delightful country nor with better com- 
panions than the men acting as correspondents 
with the Second Army. For the sake of such good 
company, and to see more of Manchuria, I per- 
sonally wanted to keep on. But I was not being 
paid to go camping with a set of good fellows. 
Already the Japanese had wasted six months of 
my time and six months of Mr. Collier's money, 
Mr. Fox had been bottled up for a period of equal 
length, while Mr. Prior and Mr. Lynch had been 
prisoners in Tokio for even four months longer. 
And now that Okabe assured us that Liao-Yang 
was already taken, and Oku told us if there were 
any fighting we would not be allowed to witness 
it, it seemed a good time to quit. 

Other correspondents would have quit then, as 
most of them did ten days later, but that their 
work and ours in a slight degree differed. As we 
were not working for daily papers, we used the 
cable but seldom, while they used it every day. 
Each evening Okabe brought them the official 
account of battles and of the movements of the 
troops, which news of events which they had 
not witnessed they sent to their separate papers. 
But for our purposes it was necessary we should 
see things for ourselves. For, contrary to the 

221 



Battles I Did Not See 

popular accusation, no matter how flattering it 
may be, we could not describe events at which 
we were not present. 

But what mainly moved us to decide, was the 
statements of Okabe, the officer especially detailed 
by the War Office to aid and instruct us, to act 
as our guide, philosopher, and friend, our only 
official source of information, who told us that 
Liao-Yang was occupied by the Japanese and that 
the Russians were in retreat. He even begged 
me personally to come with him into Liao-Yang 
on the 29th and see how it was progressing under 
the control of the Japanese authorities. 

Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kuro- 
patkin had promised at Liao-Yang, and which we 
had come to see, would never take place. 

Why Okabe lied I do not know. Whether Oku 
had lied to him, or whether it was Baron-General 
Kodama or Major-General Fukushima who had 
instructed him to so grossly misinform us, it is 
impossible to say. While in Tokio no one ever 
more frequently, nor more unblushingly, made 
statements that they knew were untrue than 
did Kodama and Fukushima, but none of their 
deceptions had ever harmed us so greatly as did 
the lie they put into the mouth of Okabe. Not 
only had the Japanese not occupied Liao-Yang 

222 



Battles I Did Not See 

on the evening of the 27th of August, but later, 
as everybody knows, they had to fight six days to 
get into it. And Kuroki, so far from being fifty 
miles north toward Mukden as Okabe said he 
was, was twenty miles to the east on our right 
preparing for the closing in movement which was 
just about to begin. Three days after we had 
left the army, the greatest battle since Sedan 
was waged for six days. 

So our half year of time and money, of dreary 
waiting, of daily humihations at the hands of 
officers with minds diseased by suspicion, all of 
which would have been made up to us by the 
sight of this one great spectacle, was to the end 
absolutely lost to us. Perhaps we made a mistake 
in judgment. As the cards fell, we certainly did. 
But after the event it is easy to be wise. For the 
last fifteen years, had I known as much the night 
before the Grand Prix was run as I did the next 
afternoon, I would be passing rich. 

The only proposition before us was this: There 
was small chance of any immediate fighting. If 
there were fighting we could not see it. Con- 
fronted with the same conditions again, I would 
decide in exactly the same manner. Our mis- 
fortune lay in the fact that our experience with 
other armies had led us to believe that officers and 

223 



Battles I Did Not See 

gentlemen speak the truth, that men with titles 
of nobility, and with the higher titles of general 
and major-general, do not lie. In that we were 
mistaken. 

The parting from the other correspondents was 
a brutal attack upon the feelings which, had we 
known they were to follow us two weeks later to 
Tokio, would have been spared us. It is worth 
recording why, after waiting many months to get 
to the front, they in their turn so soon left it. 
After each of the big battles before Liao-Yang 
they handed the despatches they had written for 
their papers to Major Okabe. Each day he 
told them these despatches had been censored 
and forwarded. After three days he brought back 
all the despatches and calmly informed the corre- 
spondents that not one of their cables had been 
sent. It was the final affront of Japanese duplicity. 
In recording the greatest battle of modern times 
three days had been lost, and by a lie. The 
object of their coming to the Far East had been 
frustrated. It was fatuous to longer expect from 
Kodama and his pupils fair play or honest treat- 
ment, and in the interest of their employers and 
to save their own self-respect, the representatives 
of all the most important papers in the world, the 
Times, of London, the New York Herald, the 

224 



Battles I Did Not See 

Paris Figaro^ the London Daily Telegraph, Daily 
Mail, and Morning Post, quit the Japanese army. 

Meanwhile, unconscious of what we had missed, 
the four of us were congratulating ourselves upon 
our escape, and had started for New-Chwang. 
Our first halt was at Hai-Cheng, in the same com- 
pound in which for many days with the others 
we had been imprisoned. But our halt was a 
brief one. We found the compound glaring in 
the sun, empty, silent, filled only with memories 
of the men who, with their laughter, their stories, 
and their songs had made it live. 

But now all were gone, the old familiar faces 
and the familiar voices, and we threw our things 
back on the carts and hurried away. The trails 
between Hai-Cheng and the sea made the worst 
going we had encountered in Manchuria. You 
soon are convinced that the time has not been long 
since this tract of land lay entirely under the waters 
of the Gulf of Liaotung. You soon scent the 
salt air, and as you flounder in the alluvial de- 
posits of ages, you expect to find the salt-water 
at the very roots of the millet. Water lies in every 
furrow of the miles of cornfields, water flows in 
streams in the roads, water spreads in lakes 
over the compounds, it oozes from beneath the 
very walls of the go-downs. You would not be 

225 



Battles I Did Not See 

surprised at any moment to see the tide returning 
to envelop you. In this liquid mud a cart can 
make a trail by the simple process of continu- 
ing forward. The havoc is created in the millet 
and the ditches its iron-studded wheels dig in the 
mud leave to the eyes of the next comer as per- 
fectly good a trail as the one that has been in use 
for many centuries. Consequently the opportu- 
nities for choosing the wrong trail are excellent, 
and we embraced every opportunity. But friendly 
Chinamen, and certainly they are a friendly, hu- 
man people, again and again cheerfully went far 
out of their way to guide us back to ours, and 
so, after two days, we found ourselves five miles 
from New-Chwang. 

Here we agreed to separate. We had heard 
a marvellous tale that at New-Chwang there was 
ice, champagne, and a hotel with enamelled bath- 
tubs. We had unceasingly discussed the probabil- 
ity of this being true, and what we would do with 
these luxuries if we got them, and when we came 
so near to where they were supposed to be, it 
was agreed that one of us would ride on ahead 
and command them, while the others followed with 
the carts. The lucky number fell to John Fox, 
and he left us at a gallop. He was to engage 
rooms for the four, and to arrange for the care of 

226 



Battles I Did Not See 

seven Japanese interpreters and servants, nine 
Chinese coolies, and nineteen horses and mules. 
We expected that by eight o'clock v^e would be 
eating the best dinner John Fox could order. 
We v^ere mistaken. Not that John Fox had not 
ordered the dinner, but no one ate it but John 
Fox. The very minute he left us Prior's cart 
turned turtle in the mud, and the largest of his 
four mules lay down in it and knocked off work. 
The mule was hot and very tired, and the mud 
was soft, cool, and wet, so he burrowed under its 
protecting surface until all we could see of him 
was his ears. The coolies shrieked at him. Prior 
issued ultimatums at him, the Japanese servants 
stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked 
about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his 
mud bath. When there is no more of a mule to 
hit than his ears, he has you at a great disadvan- 
tage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged 
at his head, we found that the harder they tugged, 
the deeper they sank. When they were so far 
out of sight that we were in danger of losing them 
too, we ordered them to give up the struggle and 
unload the cart. Before we got it out of dry- 
dock, reloaded, and again in line with the other 
carts it was nine o'clock, and dark. 

In the meantime, Lynch, his sense of duty 
227 



Battles I Did Not See 

weakened by visions of enamelled bathtubs filled 
with champagne and floating lumps of ice, had 
secretly abandoned us, stealing away in the night 
and leaving us to follow. This, not ten minutes 
after we had started, Mr. Prior decided that he 
would not do, so he camped out with the carts in 
a village, while, dinnerless, supperless, and thirsty, 
I rode on alone. I reached New-Chwang at mid- 
night, and after being refused admittance by the 
Japanese soldiers, was finally rescued by the 
Number One man from the Manchuria Hotel, 
who had been sent out by Fox with two sikhs and 
a lantern to find me. For some minutes I dared 
not ask him the fateful questions. It was better 
still to hope than to put one's fortunes to the test. 
But I finally summoned my courage. 

"Ice, have got.^" I begged. 

"Have got," he answered. 

There was a long, grateful pause, and then in 
a voice that trembled, I again asked, "Cham- 
pagne, have got ?" 

Number One man nodded. 

"Have got," he said. 

I totally forgot until the next morning to ask 
about the enamelled bathtubs. 

When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and 
as It was six weeks since any of us had seen a real 

228 



Battles I Did Not See 

bed, I did not wake him. Hence, he did not 
know I was in the hotel, and throughout the 
troubles that followed I slept soundly. 

Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for run- 
ning away from us, lost his own way, and, after 
stumbling into an old sow and her litter of pigs, 
which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, 
stumbled into a Japanese outpost, was hailed as 
a Russian spy, and made prisoner. This had one 
advantage, as he now was able to find New- 
Chwang, to which place he was marched, closely 
guarded, arriving there at half-past two in the 
morning. Since he ran away from us he had 
been wandering about on foot for ten hours. He 
sent a note to Mr. Little, the British Consul, and 
to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang, and, 
still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, 
demanded that his captors take him to the Man- 
churia Hotel. There he swore they would find a 
pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New- 
Chwang, three friends who could identify him, 
four carts, seven servants, nine coolies, and nine- 
teen animals. The commandant took him to 
the Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth 
of corroborative detail they found John Fox in 
bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New- 
Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting 

229 



Battles I Did Not See 

us to enter it, there was no one to prove what 
either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer flew into 
a passion and told Fox he would send both of 
them out of town on the first train. Mr. Fox 
was annoyed at being pulled from his bed at three 
in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, 
so he said that there was not a train fast enough 
to get him out of New-Chwang as quickly as he 
wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of Japan 
and away from the Japanese people. At this the 
officer, being a Yale graduate, and speaking very 
pure English, told Mr. Fox to "shut up," and Mr. 
Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally 
perfect command of English, pure and unde- 
filed, shook his fist in the face of the Japanese 
officer and told him to "shut up yourself" Lynch, 
seeing the witness he had summoned for the de- 
fence about to plunge into conflict with his cap- 
tor, leaped unhappily from foot to foot, and was 
heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands 
should adjourn for ice and champagne. 

"If I were a spy," demanded Fox, "do you 
suppose I would have ridden into your town on a 
white horse and registered at your head-quarters 
and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel 
and accommodations for seven servants, nine coo- 
lies, and nineteen animals ? Is that the way a Rus- 

230 



Battles I Did Not See 

sian spy works ? Does he go around with a brass 
band?" 

The officer, unable to answer in kind this ex- 
cellent reasoning, took a mean advantage of his 
position by placing both John and Lynch under 
arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese 
policeman to guard their slumbers. The next 
morning Prior arrived with the pass, and from 
the decks of the first out-bound Enghsh steamer 
Fox hurled through the captain's brass speaking- 
trumpet our farewells to the Japanese, as repre- 
sented by the gun-boats in the harbor. Their 
officers, probably thinking his remarks referred to 
floating mines, ran eagerly to the side. But our 
ship's captain tumbled from the bridge, rescued his 
trumpet, and begged Fox, until we were under the 
guns of a British man-of-war, to issue no more fare- 
well addresses. The next evening we passed into 
the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and saw above Port Arthur 
the great guns flashing in the night, and the next 
day we anchored in the snug harbor of Chefoo. 

I went at once to the cable station to cable 
Collier s I was returning, and asked the China- 
man in charge if my name was on his list of 
those correspondents who could send copy collect. 
He said it was; and as I started to write, he added 
with grave politeness, "I congratulate you." 

231 



Battles I Did Not See 

For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a 
chill creeping down my spine. I knew what sort 
of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of it. 

"Why?" I asked. 

The Chinaman bowed and smiled. 

"Because you are the first," he said. "You are 
the only correspondent to arrive who has seen the 
battle of Liao-Yang." 

The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew 
then what disaster had fallen, but I cheated my- 
self by pretending the man was misinformed. 
"There was no battle," I protested. "The Jap- 
anese told me themselves they had entered Liao- 
Yang without firing a shot." The cable opera- 
tor was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw 
what it meant and delivered the blow with the dis- 
taste of a physician who must tell a patient he 
cannot recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real 
sympathy he said, "They have been fighting for 
six days.*' 

I went over to a bench, and sat down; and 
when Lynch and Fox came in and took one 
look at me, they guessed what had happened. 
When the Chinaman told them of what we had 
been cheated, they, in their turn, came to the 
bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. 
No one even swore. Six months we had waited 

232 



Battles I Did Not See 

only to miss by three days the greatest battle 
since Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie. 

For six months we had tasted all the indignities 
of the suspected spy, we had been prisoners of 
war, we had been ticket-of-leave men, and it is 
not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that 
same day when we saw in the harbor the white 
hull of the cruiser Cincinnati with our flag lifting 
at her stern. We did not know a soul on board, 
but that did not halt us. As refugees, as fleeing 
political prisoners, as American slaves escaping 
from their Japanese jailers, we climbed over the 
side and demanded protection and dinner. We 
got both. Perhaps it was not good to rest on 
that bit of drift-wood, that atom of our country 
that had floated far from the main-land and now 
formed an island of American territory in the 
harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content 
to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white 
and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those 
eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and 
home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, 
and New York City. We forgot our dark- 
skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, un- 
friendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one 
thing and meant the other. All the memories of 
those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of 

233 



Battles I Did Not See 

unnecessary humiliations, of petty unpoliteness 
from a half-educated, half-bred, conceited, and 
arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knap- 
sack. We were again at home. Again with our 
own people. Out of the happy confusion of that 
great occasion I recall two toasts. One was offered 
by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the 
Japanese for Japan!' Even the Japanese ward- 
room boy did not catch its significance. The 
other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference 
to our brown brothers of the Philippines first 
spoken in Manila. "To the Japanese: 'They 
may be brothers to Commodore Perry, but they 
ain't no brothers of mine.'" 

It was a joyous night. Lieutenant Gilmore, 
who had been an historic prisoner in the Phihp- 
pines, so far sympathized with our escape from 
the Yellow Peril as to intercede with the captain 
to extend the rules of the ship. And those rules 
that were incapable of extending broke. Indeed, I 
believe we broke everything but the eight-inch 
gun. And finally we were conducted to our 
steamer in a launch crowded with slim-waisted, 
broad-chested youths in white mess jackets, 
clasping each other's shoulders and singing, "Way 
down in my heart, I have a feeling for you, a 
sort of feeling for you"; while the officer of the 

234 



Battles I Did Not See 

deck turned his back, and discreetly fixed his 
night glass upon a suspicious star. 

It was an American cruiser that rescued this 
war correspondent from the bondage of Japan. 
It will require all the battle-ships in the Japanese 
navy to force him back to it. 



235 



A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S 
KIT 



A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S KIT 

1AM going to try to describe some kits and 
outfits I have seen used in different parts of 
the world by travellers and explorers, and in 
different campaigns by army officers and war 
correspondents. Among the articles, the reader 
may learn of some new thing which, when next 
he goes hunting, fishing, or exploring, he can 
adapt to his own uses. That is my hope, but I am 
sceptical. I have seldom met the man who would 
allow any one else to select his kit, or who would 
admit that any other kit was better than the one 
he himself had packed. It is a very delicate ques- 
tion. The same article that one declares is the 
most essential to his comfort, is the very first thing 
that another will throw into the trail. A man's 
outfit is a matter which seems to touch his private 
honor. I have heard veterans sitting around a 
camp-fire proclaim the superiority of their kits 
with a jealousy, loyalty, and enthusiasm they 
would not exhibit for the flesh of their flesh and 
the bone of their bone. On a campaign, you 
may attack a man's courage, the flag he serves, the 

239 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

newspaper for which he works, his intelligence, 
or his camp manners, and he will ignore you; but 
if you criticise his patent water-bottle he will fall 
upon you with both fists. So, in recommending 
any article for an outfit, one needs to be careful. 
An outfit lends itself to dispute, because the 
selection of its component parts is not an exact 
science. It should be, but it is not. A doctor 
on his daily rounds can carry in a compact little 
satchel almost everything he is liable to need; a 
carpenter can stow away in one box all the tools 
of his trade. But an outfit is not selected on any 
recognized principles. It seems to be a question 
entirely of temperament. As the man said when 
his friends asked him how he made his famous 
cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth 
is that each man in selecting his outfit generally 
follows the lines of least resistance. With one, 
the pleasure he derives from his morning bath 
outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he 
must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is 
hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. 
He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his 
head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. 
But another man, should he sleep all night on the 
ground, the next day would be of no use to him- 
self, his regiment, or his newspaper. So he car- 

240 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

ries a folding cot and the more fortunate one of 
tougher fibre laughs at him. Another man says 
that the only way to campaign is to travel "light," 
and sets forth with rain-coat and field-glass. He 
honestly thinks that he travels light because his 
intelligence tells him it is the better way; but, as a 
matter of fact, he does so because he is lazy. 
Throughout the entire campaign he borrows from 
his friends, and with that camaraderie and unself- 
ishness that never comes to the surface so strongly 
as when men are thrown together in camp, they 
lend him whatever he needs. When the war is 
over, he is the man who goes about saying: "Some 
of those fellows carried enough stuff to fill a mov- 
ing van. Now, look what I did. I made the 
entire campaign on a tooth-brush." 

As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking admira- 
tion for the man who dares to borrow. His really 
is the part of wisdom. But at times he may lose 
himself i places where he can neither a borrower 
nor a lenc ^r be, and there are men so tenderly con- 
stituted th It they cannot keep another man hun- 
gry while t ley use his coffee-pot. So it is well to 
take a few hings with you — if only to lend them 
to the men n\\o travel "light." 

On hunti g and campaigning trips the climate, 
the means c ' transport, and the chance along the 

241 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

road of obtaining food and fodder vary so greatly 
that it is not possible to map out an outfit which 
would serve equally well for each of them. What 
on one journey was your most precious possession 
on the next is a useless nuisance. On two trips I 
have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, 
fifty pounds, which, as we slept in huts, I never 
once had occasion to open; while on other trips 
in countries that promised to be more or less 
settled, I had to always live under canvas, and 
sometimes broke camp twice a day. 

In one war, in which I worked for an English 
paper, we travelled like major-generals. When 
that war started few thought it would last over 
six weeks, and many of the officers regarded it in 
the light of a picnic. In consequence, they mob- 
ilized as they never would have done had they 
foreseen what was to come, and the mess contrac- 
tor grew rich furnishing, not only champagne, 
which in campaigns in fever countries h? s saved 
the life of many a good man, but cases of 
even port and burgundy, which nev r greatly 
helped any one. Later these mess sup plies were 
turned over to the field-hospitals, but at the start 
every one travelled with more than he needed 
and more than the regulations allowc i, and each 
correspondent was advised that if he represented 

242 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

a first-class paper and wished to "save his face'* 
he had better travel in state. Those who did not, 
found the staff and censor less easy of access, and 
the means cf obtaining information more diffi- 
cult. But it was a nuisance. If, when a man 
halted at your tent, you could not stand him whis- 
key and sparklet soda, Egyptian cigarettes, com- 
pressed soup, canned meats, and marmalade, 
your paper was suspected of trying to do it "on 
the cheap," and not only of being mean, but, as 
this was a popular war, unpatriotic. When the 
army stripped down to work all this was discon- 
tinued, but at the start I believe there were carried 
with that column as many tins of tan-leather 
dressing as there were rifles. On that march my 
own outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy's caravan. 
It consisted of an enormous cart, two oxen, three 
Basuto ponies, one Australian horse, three ser- 
vants, and four hundred pounds of supplies and 
baggage. When it moved across the plain it looked 
as large as a Fall River boat. Later, when I 
joined the opposing army, and was not expected 
to maintain the dignity of a great London daily, 
I carried all my belongings strapped to my back, 
or to the back of my one pony, and I was quite as 
comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with 
the private car and the circus tent. 

243 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

Throughout the Greek war, as there were no 
horses to be had for love or money, we walked, 
and I learned then that when one has to carry his 
own kit the number of things he car do without 
is extraordinary. While I marched with the 
army, offering my kingdom for a horse, I carried 
my outfit in saddle-bags thrown over my shoulder. 
And I think it must have been a good outfit, for I 
never bought anything to add to it or threw any- 
thing away. I submit that as a fair test of a kit. 

Further on, should any reader care to know 
how for several months one may keep going with 
an outfit he can pack in two saddle-bags, I will 
give a list of the articles which in three campaigns 
I carried in mine. 

Personally, I am for travelling "light," but at 
the very start one is confronted with the fact that 
what one man calls light to another savors of lux- 
ury. I call fifty pounds Hght; in Japan we each 
were allowed the officer's allowance of sixty-six 
pounds. Lord Wolseley, in his " Pocketbook," 
cuts down the officer's kit to forty pounds, while 
"Nessmut," of the Forest and Stream, claims that 
for a hunting trip, all one wants does not weigh 
over twenty-six pounds. It is very largely a ques- 
tion of compromise. You cannot eat your cake 
and have it. You cannot, under a tropical sun, 

244 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

throw away your blanket and when the night dew- 
falls wrap it around you. And if, after a day of 
hard dimbing or riding, you want to drop into a 
folding chair, to make room for it in your carry-all 
you must give up many other lesser things. 

By travelling light I do not mean any lighter 
than the necessity demands. If there is trans- 
port at hand, a man is foolish not to avail himself 
of it. He is always foolish if he does not make 
things as easy for himself as possible. The ten- 
derfoot will not agree with this. With him there 
is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that 
to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He be- 
lieves that "roughing it" is synonymous with 
hardship, and in season and out of season he plays 
the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts 
he can avoid because he fears his comrades will 
think he cannot suffer hardships is an idiot. You 
often hear it said of a man that "he can rough it 
with the best of them." Any one can do that. 
The man I want for a "bunkie" is the one who 
can be comfortable while the best of them are 
roughing it. The old soldier knows that it is 
his duty to keep himself fit, so that he can perform 
his work, whether his work is scouting for forage 
or scouting for men, but you will often hear the 
volunteer captain say: "Now, boys, don't for- 

245 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

get we're roughing it; and don't expect to be com- 
fortable." As a rule, the only reason his men 
are uncomfortable is because he does not know 
how to make them otherwise; or because he 
thinks, on a campaign, to endure unnecessary 
hardship is the mark of a soldier. 

In the Cuban campaign the day the American 
forces landed at Siboney a major-general of vol- 
unteers took up his head-quarters in the house 
from which the Spanish commandant had just 
fled, and on the veranda of which Caspar Whitney 
and myself had found two hammocks and made 
ourselves at home. The Spaniard who had been 
left to guard the house courteously offered the 
major-general his choice of three bed-rooms. They 
all were on the first floor and opened upon the 
veranda, and to the general's staff a tent could 
have been no easier of access. Obviously, it 
was the duty of the general to keep himself in 
good physical condition, to obtain as much sleep 
as possible, and to rest his great brain and his 
limbs cramped with ten days on shipboard. 
But in a tone of stern reproof he said, "No; I 
am campaigning now, and I have given up all 
luxuries." And with that he stretched a poncho 
on the hard boards of the veranda, where, while 
just a few feet from him the three beds and white 

246 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

mosquito nets gleamed invitingly, he tossed and 
turned. Besides being a silly spectacle, the sight 
of an old gentleman lying wide awake on his 
shoulder-blades was disturbing, and as the hours 
dragged on we repeatedly offered him our ham- 
mocks. But he fretfully persisted in his deter- 
mination to be uncomfortable. And he was. 
The feelings of his unhappy staff, several of whom 
were officers of the regular army, who had to 
follow the example of their chief, were toward 
morning hardly loyal. Later, at the very mo- 
ment the army moved up to the battle of San 
Juan this same major-general was relieved of 
his command on account of illness. Had he 
sensibly taken care of himself, when the moment 
came when he was needed, he would have been 
able to better serve his brigade and his country. 
In contrast to this pose is the conduct of the 
veteran hunter, or old soldier. When he gets into 
camp his first thought, after he has cared for his 
horse, is for his own comfort. He does not wolf 
down a cold supper and then spread his blanket 
wherever he happens to be standing. He knows 
that, especially at night, it is unfair to ask his 
stomach to digest cold rations. He knows that 
the warmth of his body is needed to help him to 
sleep soundly, not to fight chunks of canned 

247 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

meat. So, no matter how sleepy he may be, he 
takes the time to build a fire and boil a cup of 
tea or coffee. Its warmth aids digestion and saves 
his stomach from working overtime. Nor will he 
act on the theory that he is "so tired he can sleep 
anywhere." For a few hours the man who does 
that may sleep the sleep of exhaustion. But be- 
fore day breaks he will feel under him the roots 
and stones, and when he awakes he is stiff, sore, 
and unrefreshed. Ten minutes spent in digging 
holes for hips and shoulder-blades, in collecting 
grass and branches to spread beneath his blanket, 
and leaves to stuff in his boots for a pillow, will 
give him a whole night of comfort and start him 
well and fit on the next day's tramp. If you 
have watched an old sergeant, one of the Indian 
fighters, of which there are now too few left in the 
army, when he goes into camp, you will see him 
build a bunk and possibly a shelter of boughs just 
as though for the rest of his life he intended to 
dwell in that particular spot. Down in the Garcia 
campaign along the Rio Grande I said to one of 
them: *'Why do you go to all that trouble ^ We 
break camp at daybreak." He said: "Do we? 
Well, maybe you know that, and maybe the cap- 
tain knows that, but / don't know it. And so long 
as I don't know it, I am going to be just as snug 

248 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

as though I was halted here for a month." In 
camping, that was one of my first and best 
lessons — to make your surroundings healthy and 
comfortable. The temptation always is to say, 
**Oh, it is for only one night, and I am too 
tired." The next day you say the same thing, 
"We'll move to-morrow. What's the use?" But 
the fishing or shooting around the camp proves 
good, or it comes on to storm, and for maybe a 
week you do not move, and for a week you suf- 
fer discomforts. An hour of work put in at the 
beginning would have turned it into a week of 
ease. 

When there is transport of even one pack-horse, 
one of the best helps toward making camp quickly 
is a combination of panniers and bed used for 
many years by E. F. Knight, the Times war corre- 
spondent, who lost an arm at Gras Pan. It con- 
sists of two leather trunks, which by day carry 
your belongings slung on either side of the 
pack-animal, and by night act as uprights for 
your bed. The bed is made of canvas stretched 
on two poles which rest on the two trunks. For 
travelling in upper India this arrangement is 
used almost universally. Mr. Knight obtained 
his during the Chitral campaign, and since then 
has used it in every war. He had it with Ku- 

249 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

rokl's army during this last campaign in Man- 
churia.^ 

A more compact form of valise and bed com- 
bined is the "carry-all," or any of the many makes 
of sleeping-bags, which during the day carry the 
kit and at night when spread upon the ground 
serve for a bed. The one once most used by Eng- 
lishmen was Lord Wolseley's "valise and sleep- 
ing-bag." It was complicated by a number of 
strings, and required as much lacing as a dozen 
pairs of boots. It has been greatly improved 
by a new sleeping-bag with straps, and flaps that 
tuck in at the ends. But the obvious disadvan- 
tage of all sleeping-bags is that in rain and mud 

^ The top of the trunk is made of a single piece of leather with a 
rim that falls over the mouth of the trunk and protects the contents 
from rain. The two iron rings by which each box is slung across 
the padded back of the pack-horse are fastened by rivetted straps to 
the rear top line of each trunk. On both ends of each trunk near the 
top and back are two iron sockets. In these fit the staples that hold the 
poles for the bed. The staples are made of iron in the shape of the 
numeral 9, the poles passing through the circle of the 9. The bed 
should be four feet long three feet wide, of heavy canvas, strengthened 
by leather straps. At both ends are two buckles which connect with 
straps on the top of each trunk. Along one side of the canvas is a 
pocket running its length and open at both ends. Through this one 
of the poles passes and the other through a series of straps that ex- 
tend on the opposite side. These straps can be shortened or tight- 
ened to allow a certain "give" to the canvas, which the ordinary 
stretcher-bed does not permit. The advantage of this arrangement 
is in the fact that it can be quickly put together and that it keeps the 
sleeper clear of the ground and safeguards him from colds and 
malaria. 

250 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

you are virtually lying on the hard ground, at the 
mercy of tarantula and fever. 

The carry-all is, nevertheless, to my mind, the 
most nearly perfect w^y in which to pack a kit. 
I have tried the trunk, valise, and sleeping-bag, 
and vastly prefer it to them all. My carry-all 
differs only from the sleeping-bag in that, instead 
of lining it so that it may be used as a bed, I carry 
in its pocket a folding cot. By omitting the extra 
lining for the bed, I save almost the weight of the 
cot. The folding cot I pack is the Gold Medal 
Bed, made in this country, but which you can 
purchase almost anywhere. I once carried one 
from Chicago to Cape Town to find on arriving 
I could buy the bed there at exactly the same 
price I had paid for it in America. I also found 
them in Tokio, where imitations of them were 
being made by the ingenious and disingenuous 
Japanese. They are hght in weight, strong, and 
comfortable, and are undoubtedly the best camp- 
bed made. When at your elevation of six inches 
above the ground you look down from one of 
them upon a comrade in a sleeping-bag with 
rivulets of rain and a tide of muddy water rising 
above him, your satisfaction, as you fall asleep, is 
worth the weight of the bed in gold. 

My carry-all is of canvas with a back of water- 
251 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

proof. It is made up of three strips six and a 
half feet long. The two outer strips are each two 
feet three inches wide, the middle strip four feet. 
At one end of the middle strip is a deep pocket of 
heavy canvas with a flap that can be fastened 
by two straps. When the kit has been packed 
in this pocket, the two side strips are folded over it 
and the middle strip and the whole is rolled up 
and buckled by two heavy straps on the water- 
proof side. It is impossible for any article to fall 
out or for the rain to soak in. I have a smaller 
carry-all made on the same plan, but on a tiny 
scale, in which to carry small articles and a change 
of clothing. It goes into the pocket after the bed, 
chair, and the heavier articles are packed away. 
When the bag is rolled up they are on the outside 
of and form a protection to the articles of lighter 
weight. 

The only objection to the carry-all is that it is 
an awkward bundle to pack. It is difficult to 
balance it on the back of an animal, but when 
you are taking a tent with you or carrying your 
provisions, it can be slung on one side of the pack 
saddle to offset their weight on the other. 

I use the carry-all when I am travelling "heavy." 
By that I mean when it is possible to obtain a 
pack-animal or cart. When travelHng light and 

252 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

bivouacking by night without a pack-horse, bed, 
or tent, I use the saddle-bags, already described. 
These can be slung over the back of the horse you 
ride, or if you v^alk, carried over your shoulder. I 
carried them in this latter way in Greece, in the 
Transvaal, and Cuba during the rebellion, and 
later with our own army. 

The list of articles I find most useful when 
travelling where it is possible to obtain transport, 
or, as we may call it, travelling heavy, are the 
following: 

A tent, seven by ten feet, with fly, jointed poles, 
tent-pins, a heavy mallet. I recommend a tent 
open at both ends with a window cut in one end. 
The window, when that end is laced and the other 
open, furnishes a draught of air. The window 
should be covered with a flap which, in case 
of rain, can be tied down over it with tapes. A 
great convenience in a tent is a pocket sewn in- 
side of each wall, for boots, books, and such small 
articles. The pocket should not be filled with 
anything so heavy as to cause the walls to sag. 
Another convenience with a tent is a leather strap 
stretched from pole to pole, upon which to hang 
clothes, and another is a strap to be buckled 
around the front tent-pole, and which is studded 
with projecting hooks for your lantern, water-bot- 

253 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

tie, and field-glasses. This latter can be bought 
ready-made at any military outfitter's. 

Many men object to the wooden tent-pin on 
account of its tendency to split, and carry pins 
made of iron. With these, an inch below the head 
of the pin is a projecting barb which holds the 
tent rope. When the pin is being driven in, the 
barb is out of reach of the mallet. Any black- 
smith can beat out such pins, and if you can 
aflFord the extra weight, they are better than those 
of ash. Also, if you can afford the weight, it is 
well to carry a strip of water-proof or oilcloth 
for the floor of the tent to keep out dampness. 
All these things appertaining to the tent should 
be rolled up in it, and the tent itself carried in a 
light-weight receptacle, with a running noose like 
a sailor's kit-bag. 

The carry-all has already been described. Of 
its contents, I consider first in importance the 
folding bed. 

And second in importance I would place a 
folding chair. Many men scoff at a chair as a 
cumbersome luxury. But after a hard day on 
foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground 
with your back to a rock and your hands locked 
across your knees to keep yourself from sliding, or 
on a box with no rest for your spinal column, you 

254 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

begin to think a chair is not a luxury, but a neces- 
sity. During the Cuban campaign, for a time I 
was a member of General Sumner's mess. The 
general owned a folding chair, and whenever his 
back was turned every one would make a rush to 
get into it. One time we were discussing what, in 
the light of our experience of that campaign, we 
would take with us on our next, and all agreed. 
Colonel Howze, Captain Andrews, and Major 
Harmon, that if one could only take one article 
it would be a chair. I carried one in Manchuria, 
but it was of no use to me, as the other correspond- 
ents occupied it, relieving each other like sentries 
on guard duty. I had to pin a sign on it, reading, 
"Don't sit on me," but no one ever saw the sign. 
Once, in order to rest in my own chair, I weakly 
established a precedent by giving George Lynch 
a cigar to allow me to sit down (on that march 
there was a mess contractor who supplied us 
even with cigars, and occasionally with food), 
and after that, whenever a man wanted to smoke, 
he would commandeer my chair, and unless bribed 
refuse to budge. This seems to argue the popu- 
larity of the contractor's cigars rather than that 
of the chair, but, nevertheless, I submit that on a 
campaign the article second in importance for rest, 
comfort, and content is a chair. The best I know 

255 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

is one invented by Major Elliott of the British 
army. I have an Elliott chair that I have used 
four years, not only when camping out, but in 
my writing-room at home. It is an arm-chair, 
and is as comfortable as any made. The objec- 
tions to it are its weight, that it packs bulkily, 
and takes down into too many pieces. Even with 
these disadvantages it is the best chair. It can be 
purchased at the Army and Navy and Anglo- 
Indian stores in London. A chair of lighter 
weight and one-fourth the bulk is the Willisden 
chair, of green canvas and thin iron supports. 
It breaks in only two pieces, and is very comfort- 
able. 

Sir Harry Johnson, in his advice to explorers, 
makes a great point of their packing a chair. 
But he recommends one known as the "Welling- 
ton," which is a cane-bottomed affair, heavy and 
cumbersome. Dr. Harford, the instructor in out- 
fit for the Royal Geographical Society, recom- 
mends a steamer-chair, because it can be used on 
shipboard and "can be easily carried afterward.'* 
If there be anything less easy to carry than a deck- 
chair I have not met it. One might as soon 
think of packing a folding step-ladder. But if 
he has the transport, the man who packs any 
reasonably light folding chair will not regret it. 

256 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

As a rule, a cooking kit is built like every other 
cooking kit in that the utensils for cooking are 
carried in the same pot that is used for boiling 
the water, and the top of the pot turns itself into 
a frying-pan. For eight years I always have used 
the same kind of cooking kit, so I cannot speak of 
others with knowledge; but I have always looked 
with envious eyes at the Preston cooking kit and 
water-bottle. Why it has not already been 
adopted by every army I do not understand, for 
in no army have I seen a kit as compact or as 
light, or one that combines as many useful articles 
and takes up as little room. It is the invention 
of Captain Guy H. Preston, Thirteenth Cavalry, 
and can be purchased at any military outfitter's. 

The cooking kit I carry is, or was, in use in 
the German army. It is made of aluminum, 
weighs about as much as a cigarette-case, and 
takes up as little room as would a high hat. It is 
a frying-pan and coffee-pot combined. From the 
Germans it has been borrowed by the Japanese, 
and one smaller than mine, but of the same pat- 
tern, is part of the equipment of each Japanese 
soldier. On a day's march there are three things 
a man must carry: his water-bottle, his food, 
which, with the soldier, is generally carried in a 
haversack, and his cooking kit. Preston has 

257 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

succeeded most ingeniously in combining the 
water-bottle and the cooking kit, and I believe 
by cutting his water-bottle in half, he can make 
room in his cofFee-pot for the food. If he will do 
this, he will solve the problem of carrying water, 
food, and the utensils for cooking the food and for 
boiling the water in one receptacle, which can be 
carried from the shoulder by a single strap. The 
alteration I have made for my own use in Captain 
Preston's water-bottle enables me to carry in the 
cofFee-pot one day's rations of bacon, coffee, and 
biscuit. 

In Tokio, before leaving for Manchuria, Gen- 
eral Fukushima asked me to bring my entire out- 
fit to the office of the General Staff. I spread it 
out on the floor, and with unerring accuracy he 
selected from it the three articles of greatest value. 
They were the Gold Medal cot, the Elliott chair, 
and Preston's water-bottle. He asked if he could 
borrow these^ and, understanding that he wanted 
to copy them for his own use, and supposing that 
if he used them, he would, of course, make some 
restitution to the officers who had invented them, 
I foolishly loaned them to him. Later, he issued 
them in numbers to the General Staff. As I felt, 
in a manner, responsible, I wrote to the Secretary 
of War, saying I was sure the Japanese army 

258 




The component parts of the Preston cooking kit 




German Army cooking kit after use in five campaigns 



All of these articles pack inside the kettle 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

did not wish to benefit by these inventions without 
making some acknowledgment or return to the 
inventors. But the Japanese War Office could 
not see the point I tried to make, and the General 
Staff wrote a letter in reply asking why I had not 
directed my communication to General Fuku- 
shima, as it was not the Secretary of War, but he, 
who had taken the articles. The fact that they 
were being issued without any return being made, 
did not interest them. They passed cheerfully 
over the fact that the articles had been stolen, and 
were indignant, not because I had accused a 
Japanese general of pilfering, but because I had 
accused the wrong general. The letter was so 
insolent that I went to the General Staff Office 
and explained that the officer who wrote it, must 
withdraw it, and apologize for it. Both of which 
things he did. In case the gentlemen whose in- 
ventions were "borrowed" might, if they wished, 
take further steps in the matter, I sent the docu- 
ments in the case, with the exception of the letter 
which was withdrawn, to the chief of the General 
Staff in the United States and in England. 

In importance after the bed, cooking kit, and 
chair, I would place these articles: 

Two collapsible water-buckets of rubber or canvas. 
Two collapsible brass lanterns, with extra isinglass sides. 

259 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

Two boxes of sick-room candles. 

One dozen boxes of safety matches. 

One axe. The best I have seen is the Marble Safety 
Axe, made at Gladstone, Mich. You can carry it in 
your hip-pocket, and you can cut down a tree with it. 

One medicine case containing quinine, calomel, and 
Sun Cholera Mixture in tablets. 

Toilet-case for razors, tooth-powder, brushes, and 
paper. 

Folding bath-tub of rubber in rubber case. These 
are manufactured to fold into a space little larger than 
a cigar-box. 

Two towels old, and soft. 

Three cakes of soap. 

One Jaeger blanket. 

One mosquito head-bag. 

One extra pair of shoes, old and comfortable. 

One extra pair of riding-breeches. 

One extra pair of gaiters. The former regulation 
army gaiter of canvas, laced, rolls up ni a small compass 
and weighs but little. 

One flannel shirt. Gray least shows the dust. 

Two pairs of drawers. For riding, the best are those 
of silk. 

Two undershirts, balbriggan or woollen. 

Three pairs of woollen socks. 

Two linen handkerchiefs, large enough, if needed, to 
tie around the throat and protect the back of the neck. 

One pair of pajamas, woollen, not linen. 

One housewife. 

Two briarwood pipes. 

Six bags of smoking tobacco; Durham or Seal of 
North Carolina pack easily. 

One pad of writing paper. 
260 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

One fountain pen, self-filling. 

One bottle of ink, with screw top, held tight by a 
spring. 

One dozen linen envelopes. 

Stamps, wrapped in oil-silk with mucilage side next 
to the silk. 

One stick sealing-wax. In tropical countries muci- 
lage on the flap of envelopes sticks to everything except 
the envelope. 

One dozen elastic bands of the largest size. In pack- 
ing they help to compress articles like clothing into the 
smallest possible compass and in many other ways will 
be found very useful. 

One pack of playing-cards. 

Books. 

One revolver and six cartridges. 

The reason for most of these articles is obvious. 
Some of them may need a word of recommenda- 
tion. I place the water-buckets first in the list for 
the reason that I have found them one of my most 
valuable assets. With one, as soon as you halt, 
instead of waiting for your turn at the well or 
water-hole, you can carry water to your horse, and 
one of them once filled and set in the shelter of 
the tent, later saves you many steps. It also can 
be used as a nose-bag, and to carry fodder. I 
recommend the brass folding lantern, because 
those I have tried of tin or aluminum have in- 
variably broken. A lantern is an absolute neces- 
sity. When before daylight you break camp, or 

261 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

hurry out in a wind storm to struggle with flying 
tent-pegs, or when at night you wish to read or 
play cards, a lantern with a stout frame and steady 
light is indispensable. The original cost of the 
sick-room candles is more than that of ordinary 
candles, but they burn longer, are brighter, and 
take up much less room. To protect them and 
the matches from dampness, or the sun, it is well 
to carry them in a rubber sponge-bag. Any 
one who has forgotten to pack a towel will not 
need to be advised to take two. An old sergeant 
of Troop G, Third Cavalry, once told me that if 
he had to throw away everything he carried in 
his roll but one article, he would save his towel. 
And he was not a particularly fastidious sergeant 
either, but he preferred a damp towel in his roll 
to damp clothes on his back. Every man knows 
the dreary halts in camp when the rain pours out- 
side, or the regiment is held in reserve. For 
times like these a pack of cards or a book is worth 
carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates 
from which it was printed. At present it is easy 
to obtain all of the modern classics in volumes 
small enough to go into the coat-pocket. In 
Japan, before starting for China, we divided up 
among the correspondents Thomas Nelson & Sons' 
and Doubleday, Page & Co.'s pocket editions of 

262 



A War Correspondent's Kit 

Dickens, Thackeray, and Lever, and as most of 
our time in Manchuria was spent locked up in 
compounds, they proved a great blessing. 

In the list I have included a revolver, follov^ing 
out the old saying that "You may not need it for 
a long time, but when you do need it, you want it 
damned quick." Except to impress guides and 
mule-drivers, it is not an essential article. In six 
campaigns I have carried one, and never used it, 
nor needed it but once, and then while I was dodg- 
ing behind the foremast it lay under tons of lug- 
gage in the hold. The number of cartridges I 
have limited to six, on the theory that if in six 
shots you haven't hit the other fellow, he will have 
hit you, and you will not require another six. 

This, I think, completes the Hst of articles that 
on different expeditions I either have found of 
use, or have seen render good service to some one 
else. But the really wise man will pack none of 
the things enumerated in this article. For the 
larger his kit, the less benefit he will have of it. 
It will all be taken from him. And accordingly 
my final advice is to go forth empty-handed, naked 
and unashamed, and borrow from your friends. 
I have never tried that method of collecting an 
outfit, but I have seen never it fail, and of all 
travellers the man who borrows is the wisest. 

263 



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